


All You Have Is Your Fire

by kynikos



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (a little at least), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula deserved better, Crazy Azula (Avatar), Everyone chasing everyone, Fire Nation Royal Family, Firebending & Firebenders, Gen, Honor, Iroh's doing his best, Multi, Order of the White Lotus, Politics, The Earth Kingdom sucks, Zuko (Avatar) is a Good Brother, Zuko (Avatar) is also a Wanted Criminal, the White Lotus always seemed a bit shifty to me tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26639089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kynikos/pseuds/kynikos
Summary: The Avatar won the war by stripping Phoenix King Ozai of his bending; by taking what defined the man, and ripping it out of his soul.Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee have been away from the Fire Nation for five years, doing Agni-only-knows-what. Sometimes it was even legal. Zuko never joined the Gaang. He never tied his fate to the Avatar's. Now he's going to have to save his sister. Get away fromeveryonechasing him all at once. And possibly kill the Avatar.Zuko-and-Azula centric. Fire Hazard siblings on the run! ...(eventually).
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Mai & Ty Lee & Zuko, Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Iroh, Ty Lee & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 86
Kudos: 265





	1. Zuko I (The Trial)

**Author's Note:**

> Aang really went 'noooo, I don't wanna kill Ozai! ...I'll just have my friends blow up his ships and kill everyone on those, while I go ahead and take away everything from him that makes life worth living!' I mean, I hate Ozai as much as the next guy, but it would have been kinder to kill him. 
> 
> And then they went ahead and chained up Azula, who had been betrayed by literally everyone she ever cared about. 
> 
> ('but she was _crazy_ she had _fire hands_ waaa' you know what else she had, emotionally-abusive parents and no opportunity for redemption.)  
> (Okay, _one_ opportunity for redemption. But no second chance like Zuko got, and honestly she didn't do terribly with what she was given.)
> 
> I could go on about how Azula and Zuko are more similar than they're given credit for, and how Azula could have done better given the chance. But you probably already know that, and I have a story to present. So.

_To die would have been the more merciful fate. He did not die, but after that day he never truly lived. He_ existed _, a broken shell of a man._

_He wept when Agni rose, every day, without fail._

\- From the archives of the Fire Sages

* * *

It had been a long time since Zuko had tasted fire flakes. They didn’t often serve Fire Nation street food in the Earth Kingdom.

They weren’t as good as he remembered. It could’ve been that they had been out in the sea breeze all day, or that they just weren’t made very well; but he was worried that he had lost touch with his people, having been gone so long. That he had lost touch with the things that made the Fire Nation what it was…

‘You're overthinking something,’ Mai hissed in his ear. ‘I can tell. Stop it. What's wrong?’

He jumped. Right. He wasn’t alone in his room (or in a balloon, or training, or hiding in a cave), able to lose himself in his convoluted trains of thought.

It was silly, anyway. Fire flakes, for Agni’s sake. That cart hadn’t looked exactly up to palace standards.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just weird to be back.’

‘I think it’s nice,’ Ty Lee said. She hadn’t lost her wide smile since she had stepped off the ferry and onto the pier. ‘The air smells cleaner than it used to.’

‘You're by the ocean,’ Mai said. ‘Of course it’ll smell clean. Wait till we get to Capital City.’

‘I want to buy a hood,’ Ty Lee announced. They were just passing a shop whose storefront conveniently displayed a wide selection of hooded cloaks in various covers. ‘It’ll help me feel more undercover.’

‘We don’t have the money—’ Mai started to say, but Ty Lee was already inside the shop.

‘Do you have one in pink?’ she asked the woman behind the counter. ‘A pink hood?’

‘Tui and La, send mercy,’ Mai said.

* * *

They made it to the postilliate without too much more delay. It wasn’t hard to find a carriage to Capital City: _everyone_ wanted to go to Capital City. They bought three third-class tickets – leaving them with barely enough money for one more meal – and tried to rest.

Resting wasn’t easy. Even in first-class, carriages drawn by ostrich-horses were a bumpy ride. Third class was basically a big barrel on wheels. They shared the carriage with three other passengers, one of whom was almost certainly a gecko-pig farmer, judging by the smell.

(‘Perhaps we should buy him a bar of soap, to prevent him being charged with a war crime,’ Mai whispered to Zuko, who didn’t think it was as funny as Mai thought it was.)

‘So where are you folks from?’ one of the other inhabitants of the carriage asked Zuko. There was nothing but benevolent half-interest in his voice – Zuko had no doubt he was only trying to make polite conversation – but he felt Mai stiffen next to him, and knew she had slipped a knife into her hand hidden in her wide sleeve.

‘Ba Sing Se,’ Zuko said.

‘Wow,’ the man said. ‘Never been. Heard it’s nice.’ He phrased the last question as a question, inviting comment. Zuko didn’t say anything. ‘I’ve got a cousin-in-law whose mother lives out there,’ he went on gamely. ‘Pho Faolin. Owns a little dumpling shop in the… bottom ring, I think you call it?’

Zuko looked straight ahead, mentally projecting as much antagonistic disinterest as possible.

‘Well, maybe you’ve been. Faolin’s Dumplings, it’s called.’

Zuko felt Ty Lee begin to lean forward in preparation to answer the man’s rambling. He nudged her, hard, but didn’t manage to stop her from talking. ‘I think I've been there!’ she said brightly. ‘They have little cookies in the shape of frog-bears?’

‘Sounds like Pho,’ the man said. ‘How about you?’ he said to the last member of the group, who was wearing a cloak and hood to rival Ty Lee’s, although it was black instead of bright pink. ‘You from around here?’

‘No.’

For a few moments, the carriage was silent, as Chatty waited for more. Nothing more came, so he said ‘Where _are_ you from?’

‘Somewhere else.’

Chatty laughed, a genuine belly laugh, as if it had been a joke. Zuko could tell that it wasn’t. This person _really_ didn’t want to talk. Suddenly, he was interested.

‘You are something,’ Chatty said, undercurrents of his laughter still present in his voice. ‘My name’s Lin. What’s yours?’

‘Look, I've had a long day. I'm not up for talking.’

‘All right,’ Lin said. He was sitting next to the gecko-pig farmer, so he started up a conversation in the corner of the carriage that wasn’t too hard for Zuko to block out. But now Zuko was trying to see under the hood of the unnamed person who wouldn’t give their name and was even less talkative than Mai on a bad day.

‘You know you're staring, right,’ Mai whispered in his ear.

‘You know they're not _looking_ at me, right,’ Zuko whispered back.

‘You know I can hear you both, right,’ the hooded person grumbled. ‘Stones, I knew I shouldn’t have taken this carriage.’

Lin, deep in discussion over the finer points of turnip harvesting, looked over for a second, but declined to comment.

‘I like your hood,’ Ty Lee said.

‘That’s your problem.’

Zuko sat back, leaning half against the uncomfortably steep seatback and half against Mai. He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. It was going to be a long trip.

* * *

‘…have to _pinch_ , just a little, when you’re pulling back the peel. You lose juice if you don’t. My mam drilled it into my head when I was…’

‘…the Avatar, did I tell you that? He was in Caldera with that Water Tribe princess, and they were just in the market, buying cabbages, like normal people! I was close enough to _touch_ …’

‘…make them like that anymore, I’ll tell you that. I had it for five years and never had to so much as take it to the grinder’s…’

‘…but she wouldn’t listen! I told her it wasn’t Ming’s, but she didn’t believe me. Women, I tell you. A completely different…’

‘…they’ll put in a little bit of orange-onion if you ask nicely. Goes real good with the noodles. I always like to get gecko-pig rind on the side, but maybe you've had enough of gecko-pig, eh?…’

* * *

Zuko did not sleep well. But he did sleep, and by the time the carriage stopped in the Capital City postilliate he was, if not _well_ rested, at least _more_ rested than he had been when he had gotten in. His neck was as sore as anything, and his cheek had creases where it had been pressed firmly into Mai’s shoulder. He groaned as he tried to stretch.

‘Welcome back to the land of the…’

‘You don’t need to greet me,’ Zuko said. ‘Did anything interesting happen while I was out?’

‘We learned a lot,’ Mai said. ‘About Lin, and what he likes to do, and eat, and where he likes to go, and who his friends are, and what _their_ interests are. It was a spectacularly interesting radian.’

‘Sounds like fun.’

Ty Lee hopped out of the carriage first, as the driver came around to open the door letting them out. ‘Thanks for the ride!’ she said to him, as disgustingly energetic and cheerful as when she had gotten in. He looked surprised. Zuko was willing to bet no one had ever thanked him for _that_ ride.

‘Have a nice stay in Capital City!’ Lin called as Zuko and Mai followed Ty Lee. ‘Try the lizard-chicken wings at Admiral Zho’s! And if you need a place to sleep, the…’ Zuko took _long_ steps to get away from the carriage.

The postilliate was just outside the main gates. As they rounded the corner around the building, into full view of the city, Zuko’s mouth involuntarily gaped.

‘It looks so _different_ ,’ Ty Lee said.

‘Wow,’ Mai said.

Capital City had been essentially a military stronghold. Now, as Zuko looked at it, he could barely make out the last vestiges of Fire Nation defense; it had become an actual city, rather than a fortress. The soldier in him automatically and subconsciously began mapping out the best route for a tactical assault, but he immediately realized that there wasn’t any point; the best assault would probably be walking right through the wide-open gates. He looked again and realized the gates were _gone_ , and it was just an… opening in the wall, through which dozens of people were moving in and out. The guard towers were gone; there were no armored Fire Nation soldiers standing by the gates, just a bored-looking man with a clipboard who was checking in a short queue of wagons loaded with produce; the walls even looked _lower_ , and civilians – _tourists_ – were walking along them.

Even the Fire Nation banners, which had throughout Zuko’s childhood been plastered across every available flat surface, were mostly gone. The ones that were left were sensible flags, proud of their country in a good way; patriotism rather than blind, megalomaniacal nationalism. And beside the orange-red of the Fire Nation, the green of the Earth Kingdom and the blue of the Water Tribes were well-represented.

‘The master of all the elements has been hard at work bringing them together,’ Zuko said, and started up the road to the city.

* * *

They had one day until the trial, to spend as they liked. They had no money, which put a bit of a limitation on their options; but it was enough to walk the streets, seeing for themselves the almost unbelievable difference the Avatar and his actions had made on the city.

‘It smells clean even _here_ ,’ Ty Lee said, grinning at Mai. ‘It wasn’t just the ocean air.’

‘Whatever,’ Mai said, but it was true. The air was empty of the soot-filled, toxic smoke that had used to hang over Fire Nation cities. With the war gone, the need for mass-production of machines of war had disappeared, and with them the factories that had polluted the nation for a hundred years. It felt right, somehow, and Zuko felt a flash of regret that he hadn’t been a part of it. He _was_ the rightful heir to the throne, and he should have been there to help his people.

‘Hey,’ Mai said, bumping his arm. ‘Can you lighten up just a little? I mean, if _I_ have to tell you that, you know you don’t look happy.’

‘Sorry. Just thinking.’

‘About?’

‘I should have been a part of this—’ He spread his arms, gesturing to everything around them. ‘All of it. These are my people.’

‘All of it?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Right. There was a trial tomorrow. He sighed. ‘There shouldn’t have to be a cost for happiness.’

‘There’s a cost for everything, Zuko.’

‘There _shouldn’t be_.’

‘Fine,’ she said, huffing, but a small smile still hiding in the corner of her mouth. ‘When we overthrow your uncle and the Avatar, you can make everything free. Screw taxes, right?’

‘I shall fly a balloon over the city and rain lizard-chicken wings upon the people from above,’ Zuko said. Mai laughed.

‘We’re getting lizard-chicken wings?’ Ty Lee asked. ‘And a balloon?’

‘Sure, why not,’ Zuko said. ‘And I’ll throw in the palace and a couple of ships if you're nice to me.’

They went on down the street that ran straight through the city, window-shopping (although most of the wares they looked at were on carts or tables) and applauding street performers.

‘Look!’ Ty Lee said, pointing. Three people completely covered in flowing white robes were in the process of forming a human totem pole. When the last one had climbed to the top, they did a backflip-and-a-half, and landed upside down on the second person’s hands. The small crowd gathered around applauded.

‘You were doing that kind of stuff when you were three,’ Mai said to Ty Lee. ‘Doesn’t impress me, after seeing you do some of your crazier stuff.’ Zuko checked to make sure no one had heard Mai basically insult the street acrobats.

‘It’s still nice to see,’ Ty Lee said. ‘They just need some practice and they could be really good!’ There were actually quite a few people who were in hearing range. Zuko tried not to look too obvious as he checked their faces to see if anyone was listening. He didn’t want to draw the slightest amount of attention to them.

‘You could do some flips,’ Mai suggested. ‘Make some money.’ That definitely wasn’t going to happen. And now a couple people had looked in their direction – why were they talking so _loud_ – and he didn’t know if he was being paranoid but he thought one of them (black shirt, grey pants, probably off-duty Earth Kingdom soldier judging by the build) had glanced for a moment longer than everyone else.

‘Maybe,’ Ty Lee said. ‘I wouldn’t want to… um, make them feel bad or anything.’ The Earth Kingdom man had definitely looked back and now he was staring.

Mai laughed. ‘You’re the nicest person I've ever met,’ she said. ‘You know that?’ He was moving closer.

Ty Lee’s face went red. She smiled – well, smiled _wider_ , since a smile was basically her default – and hugged Mai.

‘This is sickeningly sweet,’ Zuko said. ‘But can we move? Right now?’

Mai swept the street with her eyes. ‘What?’

‘Behind me. Black shirt. Coming towards us.’

Mai sighed in exasperation, as if it was Zuko’s fault someone was approaching them. ‘Fine.’

They split up. One person couldn’t follow three at once, and it was easier to lose a tail when you were by yourself anyway. They had done this countless times before, so they knew the drill (meet up three blocks ahead and two to the left). It was Zuko that the black-shirted man tried to follow, and he lost him before he had gotten to the second block.

‘This is not a good sign,’ Zuko said when they met back up. ‘We’ve been here for barely five degrees and we’ve already drawn attention to ourselves.’

‘Relax,’ Ty Lee said. ‘Don’t worry so much. Look, it wasn’t like he screamed ‘look, traitors, wanted criminals, help’. He probably just wanted to talk, and if he didn’t, we lost him, right?’

‘That’s a very optimistic way of looking at it,’ Zuko said. ‘How about this: he recognized us, and now he’s going right now to report us to the authorities. A headhunt gets called, earthbending stormtroopers comb the city, and we get arrested before we get within a mile of the trial.’

‘It’s been five years,’ Mai said. ‘We look different. Even your scar is a lot less noticeable than it used to be. He couldn’t have recognized us from wanted posters, could he?’

Zuko grumbled for a moment, but decided she was _probably_ right. ‘Let’s find somewhere to spend the night.’

‘There’s an inn over on Carnation Way,’ Ty Lee suggested. ‘They have lavender soap in the…’

‘Not an inn. We don’t have money, remember?’

Mai groaned. ‘I can’t believe I’ve come to this.’

They had slept in alleys plenty of times over the last few years. In alleys, and on dirt, and in caves, and pretty much everywhere else it was possible to get a radian of sleep. But sleeping on the street in Capital City – _his_ city – bothered Zuko just as much as it did Mai. ‘Come on. Somewhere close to where they’ll hold the trial.’

‘Alright, alright,’ Mai sighed. Ty Lee wasn’t fazed (‘It’ll be like that time we camped in Bao She!’ she said, which irritated Zuko more than he cared to tell her). They set off to find somewhere out of the way.

‘Here,’ Zuko said, later. It was an alley that sported several hideaways formed by the uneven structure of the buildings around them. Not very noticeable, and easy to get away from in case they were found.

‘And we’re _right next to a bakery_!’ Ty Lee announced, just a second before the smell of baking bread hit Zuko like a punch in the face. ‘This is great!’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Zuko said. It wasn’t like they would be here more than one night. He wouldn’t have to spend too long smelling the baking without getting to taste it.

Spirits, he was _hungry_.

The sun had been sinking for the last fifty degrees or so. ‘Well, we should get some food,’ Zuko said. ‘No, _not_ bread. Meat. Something filling. We don’t have that much, remember?’

‘Lizard-chicken wings?’ Ty Lee asked.

‘Alright. Lizard-chicken wings.’

‘And phoenix sauce.’

‘Right.’

* * *

It was evening by the time they got back to their alley. The shadows made weird shapes on the ground and walls, flickering and dancing like living things, so it was probably excusable that Zuko sat down with a sigh right on top of an actual living thing. A person. Quite a large one.

He had friends.

 _I need to be paying attention_ , Zuko berated himself as he jumped to his feet.

‘You sat on me,’ the man said who had been sat upon. A chorus of agreement came from five or six others, who had also apparently been lounging aimlessly in the shadows, inviting unwitting passersby to treat them as softer portions of the cobblestone.

‘I apologize,’ Zuko said. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘You didn’t see him?’ someone else asked. ‘You come into our alley and sit on one of us and you didn’t see him?’

Zuko didn’t quite see how that was particularly unbelievable, but he could already tell that this shadow-sitter wanted trouble. He sighed, mentally.

‘Maybe we should go,’ Ty Lee whispered.

‘Come on, it’ll be fun,’ Mai said. ‘We probably need some warmup for tomorrow anyway.’

‘What's that?’ asked the second man, stepping closer to Zuko. ‘You got a problem?’

‘If you want to beat someone up, pick a different group of innocent civilians,’ Zuko said wearily. ‘It’s not worth it, trying to start a fight with us.’

‘I’ll kill you, you little bitch,’ the man said. Not a terribly clever threat, as threats went, Zuko thought as he ducked around the first punch and slammed the steel toe of his boot into the man’s right kidney.

It wasn’t a fight worth talking about. No one drew a weapon, Zuko didn’t bend, and Ty Lee didn’t bother chi blocking. It ended with the seven ruffians-to-be running away with an assortment of broken parts, and the three ex-Fire Nationals untouched. They weren’t even breathing hard.

‘Well, that was boring,’ Mai said.

Since the Avatar’s defeat of the Phoenix King Ozai and the overthrow of the old regime, the crime world of Capital City had seen a sharp decline. There wasn’t really a point to illicit dealings, since the other kind had become so much easier and safer. So the ‘underground’, what there was of it, was made up now of small-time drug dealers and kids who wanted to be cool.

And by the next morning, all two hundred and twenty-seven of them had heard the story, gone by the alley, taken a quick look in at the three out-of-towners (two sleeping and one on watch), and walked away with a silent promise to Agni to be a better person in future.

* * *

Zuko woke with the rising of the sun, as he had for the last eight years. Mai was the one who had been on watch. She gave him a quick kiss on the forehead as he settled into his meditation position and closed his eyes, the better to feel Agni’s gift rising within him.

Firebending was unique among the elements. The other three drew their energy from their surroundings – the solidity of stone, the freedom of air, the push and pull of the water – but firebenders drew from within themselves. The inner fire wasn’t just a metaphor. Firebenders had something _special_ , something that warmed and filled and gave strength. Even if Zuko never bent again, he would always feel that fire. It was essential to him as sight or touch, as much a part of him as his legs. To lose it would not be simply to lose a weapon; it would be to lose warmth and color and taste and blood and half of what made him _him_.

He considered this for a degree and a half, managing a breathing exercise with a flame cupped in his palm, then stood and stretched properly. ‘The trial’s in a quarter radian,’ he said. ‘We should get ready. Get some good seats.’

Mai went over to Ty Lee, sprawled in what looked like a horribly uncomfortably position, and gently shook her awake. ‘Ty,’ she said in a high-pitched singsong. ‘Tyyyy.’

Ty Lee leaped into a standing position, touched her toes, and did a backflip. ‘Let’s go!’ she said.

‘ _I_ had to meditate for a degree and a half before I could consider opening my mouth to speak,’ Zuko said drily. ‘Alright. Let’s go.’

It was in the main square, where the Fire Lord traditionally addressed the nation. Seats had been placed by earthbenders in tidy curved rows. They found good seats, right at the front, a little off to the side to avoid being seen by anyone speaking to the crowd. By the time the rest of the crowd had gathered, Zuko felt as ready as he was going to get.

A double line of Fire Nation soldiers marched down the center of the square. The crowd drew back to let them pass, and Zuko marveled at how little the people seemed to fear the soldiers. In the past, there would have been panicking and shoving to get out of their way; now, they respectfully drew back, but there was no terror as there had been in the days Ozai was ruler.

A metal carriage drawn by ostrich-horses followed the soldiers into the square. Then _another_ double line of soldiers. Then…

Then his uncle. And the Avatar and his friends.

He stared at his uncle, equal parts rage and regret warring in his mind. Mai elbowed him. She could tell when he was getting too lost in his head, and he appreciated her saving him, but for now he wanted nothing more than to burn holes in Iroh’s head with his eyes.

The soldiers opened the carriage door, and Azula stepped out.

Mai and Ty Lee, in unison, sucked in an involuntary breath.

‘ _Oh_ ,’ Ty Lee said in a whisper. ‘She looks _terrible_.’

‘She’s spent five years in a Fire Nation prison,’ Zuko said. ‘They’ve kept her in freezers most of the time.’

One of the soldiers who Zuko realized was more of an announcer, stepped forward and shouted, ‘People of the Fire Nation! You are gathered to bear witness to the dispensation of justice!’

Zuko narrowed his eyes, watching the Avatar and his friends. They had grown, certainly, and aged in the last five years. He wondered whether they would be a problem.

Probably. But there wasn’t really any other option.

‘Azula, daughter of Ozai, has been tried for crimes against the Fire Nation and crimes against humanity!’

‘Wait, what?’ Mai asked. ‘Already?’

‘Shit,’ Zuko said. They had _already_ had the trial. It was over. This was… the execution. The ‘justice’.

‘She has been found guilty on multiple accounts, and been found punishable by death. But she has been granted leniency by Fire Lord Iroh and Avatar Aang…’

‘Should we do it now?’ Mai asked. Azula was still standing in front of the carriage, hands tightly bound in steel, soldiers gripping her arms on both sides.

‘Ty Lee,’ Zuko said.

‘I’m ready,’ she answered, flexing her fingers.

‘Azula, daughter of Ozai,’ the announcer finished, turning and addressing Azula, who looked like she couldn’t have cared less. ‘In the name of the Fire Nation and of the world, in the sight and blessing of Agni, the Fire Lord has passed sentence that you be stripped of your bending. Have you anything to say?’

Azula shrugged.

‘ _Now_ ,’ Zuko said.


	2. Azula I (The Lessons)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I get into it, I would like to thank my good friend [antarcticas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas) for bestowing the nickname of ' _sausage_ ' upon this fic. From now on, this fic will answer to the name of sausage and no other. 
> 
> (Apparently everything has to have breakfast-food names, it wasn't just waffle. If you haven't read it yet, go now and read 'we walk a fragile line' by her.)
> 
> (I won't link directly to it because she gave me shit for maiko. I guess I'm scum of the earth for daring to include a canon ship in my fic.)
> 
> Okay, enough of that. Here's the next chapter.

_Phoenix is reborn_

_Not with a great fight to live_

_But with a soft sleep_

\- last haiku of the poet Sho Zhin

* * *

It had taken a long time for her mind to settle. She had floated, weightless and unseeing, in the confused waters of her own soul, for far longer than she knew. Long months, possibly years, had passed. She remembered bits and pieces –

_Father, help me. Father, please, I'm right here, father look at me I'm here it’s Azula please I did what you said I was going to be good I tried I tried I’ll do better I am your loyal daughter please help me please look at me I promise I’ll try I won’t fail again please father –_

But she had had to close off that part of her mind. The time spent _mad_ had been time spent locking away memories, feelings, regrets. She screamed as she mended herself, screamed at her uncle and brother and father, but even behind the screams she was forcing parts of herself into the corner to make room for sanity.

‘Father’ became a word, something that hovered in the periphery of her consciousness. If she looked too long at it, she would feel fear and pain and betrayal, so she did not look.

‘Zuko’ became a noise, something flickering in the back of her head. It sounded like loss and mistakes and she-should-have-taken-care-of-him, and tears pricked her eyes when she listened to it, so she simply did not listen to it.

Her mind became both fragmented and more whole, as she took the most painful parts of her life and boxed them away. Finally, when she could open her eyes without seeing the ghost of her mother, she had only a vague understanding of who she was or how the world around her worked.

* * *

_Start from the beginning._

I am Azula. I am the daughter of

_Stop. Try again._

I am Azula. I am the princess of the Fire Nation.

_Good. What happened to you?_

I was to be crowned, but I was challenged by

_Stop. Try again._

I was to be crowned, but I was overthrown.

_Good. Go deeper. What are you?_

I am the greatest firebender the world has ever known.

_Yes._

I am a genius.

_Yes._

A prodigy.

_Yes._

Terrifying, and beautiful, and powerful.

_Yes._

I am perfection.

_Yes._

And I always lie.

_Stop. Try again._

* * *

She had sat in seiza on the bed for what seemed like ten degrees before the door opened. A servant entered softly, not noticing that she was awake at first. She moved around the room, adjusting curtains and preparing food on a tray. Simple food – bread, fruit, a small bowl of rice.

‘Why am I chained?’ Azula asked.

The servant shrieked and flung the tray into the air. Rice rained around her, and she backed into the opposite corner, eyes wide.

The chains were irksome. Heavy steel – cuffs around her wrists, cuffs around her ankles – and then chains built into the wall, confining her to only a few feet around the bed.

‘Lady – princess – Azula,’ the servant said, sidling towards the door. ‘Just a moment—’ and she was out the door and gone.

* * *

I banished the Dai Li.

_Yes, you did._

That’s why they’re not here to break me out of this.

_Yes._

Why did I banish them?

_Why do you think?_

I was falling apart. Not thinking straight.

_Stop. Try again._

They would have betrayed me. I saw it in their eyes.

_Yes._

* * *

It wasn’t long before the door reopened. Six soldiers in full armor entered – _idiots_ , Azula thought, _wearing armor against a firebender does nothing more than make it easier to cook you_ – followed by her uncle. Traitor to the men who now seemed to serve him.

‘Hello, uncle,’ she said.

‘Azula,’ Iroh said. She was surprised at how little emotion was in his voice. If he was happy to see her, or hated her, she could hardly tell. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Chained up,’ she said, shaking the handcuffs at him. ‘Not quite the way to show respect to the Fire Lord, uncle.’

He smiled sadly. ‘You are no longer the Fire Lord, niece,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘I am.’

* * *

He will kill me now.

_Yes._

He will not make it hurt, though. Not even if I fight back.

_Yes._

So I should—

* * *

She flung up her hands, a cone of blue fire spiraling towards her uncle.

He put up a hand and the fire divided around him, and when it cleared away no one had been hurt. ‘Azula,’ he said. ‘Please do not make this difficult. You will not be harmed here.’

She slumped against the headboard of the bed.

‘This may be hard for you to hear,’ Iroh said. ‘But I am here to tell you what has been happening. Will you let me speak?’

‘I can hardly stop you,’ Azula said. She closed her eyes, gathering herself, preparing to strike with lightning. Yes, he could redirect it. But he would have to redirect it _somewhere_ , which would hopefully cause chaos.

Or he would direct it back at her, and she would be dead and at peace.

‘… has been defeated. The war is over.’

There was a buzzing in her head. She hadn’t quite heard his words, almost like a yawn refusing to move past the jaw. Iroh was talking about someone.

‘The Avatar took his bending away from him. He is no longer a threat.’

* * *

He can take away bending.

_Yes._

He will take _my_ bending.

_Yes._

I would rather die.

_Yes._

* * *

Azula said nothing, so her uncle went on. ‘He is being kept in prison.’ That irritating buzzing came back, filling her head with white noise, and again she did not hear what he said. ‘…is missing. And you have been here. For a long time. You have been unconscious.’

‘For how long?’

Her uncle’s forehead creased. ‘About three years, now, since the day of Sozen’s Comet.’

Three years. It really had been a long time. Three years to heal, and she had noticed none of it. ‘Who cut my hair?’

‘What?’

‘If I’ve been out of it for three years, I assume my hair has been cut several times.’

Iroh looked off-guard. ‘I… one of the servants, I expect.’

‘When I get out of here, they’ll be the first one I execute.’

Iroh’s face set, as she had known it would. ‘Azula, I will not allow you to do harm to any of my citizens. You have done enough.’

‘You can’t keep me here forever,’ Azula sang. ‘I’ll _leave_ – I’ll break _out_ – you’ll have to _kill me_ …’ She bounced on the bed like an excited child, and just when Iroh looked the most confused and uncomfortable, she lashed out with the lightning.

The bolt arced towards Iroh, who reacted instantly, flinging one arm towards the window, the other hand outstretched to receive the energy and redirect its course. It blazed through him and smashed against the window, setting the curtains on fire and destroying the glass and metal bars. Azula sat back with a contented smile. ‘I could do that again,’ she said. ‘And again, and again, and again, and again, and…’

Iroh cut her off. ‘Get someone to repair the window,’ he told one of the guards.

‘I’ll just break it again. You’ll have to get me somewhere safe, uncle. Somewhere without these annoying chains. They _chafe_ , look—’ she held out her hands displaying the red marks around her wrists, and when his eyes went to her wrists she sent another bolt of lightning out of her hands and at one of the guards. The man was not as fast as the Dragon of the West. He tried redirecting it, but it was clumsily done. The lightning grounded itself in his armor, and he collapsed, screaming and twitching.

‘Take him away,’ Iroh snapped at the remaining guards. ‘And leave us.’ They obeyed hurriedly.

When the door closed, he turned back to Azula. ‘I do not want to have to hurt you, niece,’ he said. ‘And I will not kill you. But you know how the Earth Kingdom treated firebenders during the war. They crushed their hands… The same will happen to you if you refuse to cooperate. The Earth Kingdom has been… eager to get their hands on you.’ He turned to go. ‘Please, think about it. I will go now. You should rest.’ He hesitated. ‘Bending two bolts of lightning tends to take it out of you,’ he added, with the barest hint of a smile, and left.

She lay back on the bed, cuffed hands crossed over her stomach, and stared at the ceiling. The room was not flammable. The floor, walls and ceiling were stone – the chairs and table were metal – even the bedframe was metal, and as she tested the mattress she realized it was made of the salamander material they had been working on near the end of the war, the cloth that wouldn’t burn.

Well, there was a tapestry on the wall. She could start with that. With a wave of her hand, blue fire washed over the cloth, and it fell to the floor in burning shreds.

* * *

The next few days were spent alone. Servants tended to her every now and then – carefully, with fear-filled eyes, watchful guards nearby who could firebend and redirect lightning. Azula wouldn’t have hurt them, though there wasn’t any reason for _them_ to know that. No, she was saving her fire for her uncle.

And the chain holding her to the wall. By the time five days had passed, the chain had been melted through. The steel cuffs she didn’t dare try to remove – it was standard procedure to chain firebenders with thick metal, since they couldn’t melt through without burning their own skin – but the bolt holding the chain to the wall was fair game.

So on the morning of the sixth day, she rose from the bed, went to the door, and blasted it open with a bolt of lightning.

She didn’t make it far. She hadn’t expected to. What she had done, and all that she wanted to have done, was kill some people, injure some others, and find out where she was in the palace. They locked her back up, with chains twice as thick and a hissed promise to check them every day.

She didn’t care. It wasn’t like she had anywhere particular to be.

She broke out every few weeks after that. Different ways, different techniques. Hostages, faked medical emergencies, brute force. Every time, she was stopped; either by overwhelming numbers of guards, or by the blind earthbender, or by her uncle himself. Iroh had been careful when he set up her impromptu prison. She might as well have been at Boiling Rock.

Three months after she woke up, and nine escape attempts having been carried out, she was put in the freezer. She did _not_ like that.

‘Where are you taking me,’ she asked, nothing but bored disinterest in her voice, as her guards hustled her – heavily chained and cuffed – down a series of hallways. ‘Am I going to meet the queen… oh.’ They stopped in front of a metal door, into which one of the guards inserted an impressive-looking key.

The door swung open and the air inside blew out in a waft of cold that made even the guards stiffen. Azula wasn’t wearing much – a thin robe, pants and an undershirt – and though she wouldn’t have shown it on her face for the world, she felt fear stab her in the chest as icy-cold as the air in that freezer.

They shoved her in unceremoniously and slammed the door on her. She heard them walk away.

She huddled into a ball and began to shiver.

* * *

It’s so cold.

_Breathe. Shallow, slow breaths. Allow your fire to warm you. You are the greatest firebender in history – your inner heat rivals the sun – do not let the cold defeat you._

It’s so cold.

* * *

She didn’t know how many degrees passed. But long before the door opened, she had lost her grip on her fire. Away from Agni’s face, in air colder than the North Pole, she had begun to lose track of herself.

‘I was the Fire Lord,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I was the Fire Lord. There were people who were loyal to me.’

* * *

Were they loyal to me?

_For a while. But everyone betrays you._

Did they love me?

_Stop. Try again._

Did they fear me?

_Yes._

* * *

She learned quickly. Escape attempt equals the freezer. And the time spent in the cold increases with each time you escape.

She stopped trying, after a while. It only took three trips to the freezer total before she gave in. It wasn’t worth it. The joy of using her fire, seeing the terror on people’s faces, wasn’t worth losing sight of Agni for radians on end.

It had been a month since the last time she had tried to escape and been sent to the freezer. She was lying in her room. The door opened and the guards entered.

‘What do you want now,’ she drawled. They didn’t answer, and unlocked the chain holding her to the wall. They hauled her to the feet and marched her to the door. ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded, but they ignored her.

She knew the route, by now, by heart. She saw it in her nightmares. And she swore to herself not to break down in front of these peasants, but when they rounded the corner and approached the freezer door she began to scream. ‘I didn’t do anything!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you – I did nothing – you can’t – _please_ –’

The door opened, and she was pushed in, and the door shut again, and she curled into a ball. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it…’ Her mind drifted. ‘Please, I’ll do better next time, just give me a chance… I won’t fail you again, I am your loyal daughter, I swear, I won’t fail – I’ll try harder – please…’

Azula curled into a ball and sobbed like a child, and the icy freezer walls echoed back the sound of her weeping.

* * *

There was one night she spoke to her mother. It was dark – the sun had gone down thirty degrees ago – and she was lying on her bed. She couldn’t sleep, and the walls were moving in and out with her breathing. The chains felt light as feathers, and when she looked at them they floated away into thin air. She saw faces, moving back and forth across the room, bobbing and swaying and glaring at her with crushing distaste.

‘I'm sorry,’ she whispered to them. ‘I'm sorry.’ She hardly knew what she was apologizing for, but knew that there were enough sins in her past to call for a lifetime of apologies.

The door opened and her mother stepped into the room.

‘Mother,’ Azula croaked. Her mouth was so, so dry. ‘Mother, please forgive me.’

‘I'm not your mother,’ she said, and Azula squeezed her eyes shut to keep out the frown of disapproval she knew would be on her mother’s face.

‘I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘I'm sorry I'm a monster. I never tried to… I never wanted…’

‘I'm not your mother,’ her mother repeated, out there, outside Azula’s head, so Azula retreated into her mind, running from the rejection. She had disappointed them, all of them, her mother, her uncle, and all the others that she couldn’t remember or think about because part of her wouldn’t let her, the part that _did_ remember and was still screaming about it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, choked by her own tears.

When she opened her eyes her mother was gone, and the chains were back on her wrists.

* * *

It was a long time before she saw her uncle again – almost a year after she had come back to herself. When she did see him, he came in by himself and without fanfare or attendants.

‘Azula,’ he said. ‘I have some news that you will not like, but that I think you should hear now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Over the last year, the news of your awakening has spread throughout the world, sparking worry among our allies, especially in Ba Sing Se. They fear that you may escape and cause trouble, as you have in the past. We have come to a decision.’

_No no no no no…_

‘Avatar Aang will remove your ability to firebend, as he did your…’ The rest of what he said was drowned out in her shrieking. He flinched. ‘Azula, this is…’

‘Get out!’ she screamed. She threw fire at him – weak fire, soft fire, all she was able to muster after the months in and out of the freezer – not caring whether it meant they would put her back in the cold. He blocked it and backed to the door. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ She wrenched against her chains, throwing herself back and forth on the bed, screaming incoherently as Iroh left and closed the door behind him.

* * *

They’re going to take my bending.

_Yes._

My fire.

_Yes._

I’ll have nothing. Nothing left, nothing left, nothing left…

* * *

The rest of her life that had any meaning passed quickly, and the day of the trial came. It was hardly a trial at all; there was never any possibility the decision could have gone any other way. She heard the charges against her, the pathetic defense in her name, and the sentence passed, with her head bowed and eyes closed.

They took her back to her room, and told her the Avatar would come the next day. It would be public, so that the world could see the fate of the ex-princess Azula.

That night she did not sleep, but spent the time bending. Nothing impressive; nothing grand. Just shapes in the air above her bed, as she had used to when she was learning; a circle, a square, a looping yin-yang. She tried to spell her name, a faint smile on her face when the fire hung in the air just long enough to see the characters all at once.

When the sun rose she sat on her bed and did her breathing exercises, knowing that it would be for the last time. The flame in her hand did not flicker, but grew and faded as she breathed, in, out, in, out.

She was the greatest firebender in the world, and would be so for another half-radian.

Eventually they came to take her to the square. They loaded her into a metal carriage, her cuffs and chains still on her. The carriage ride took no time at all, and before she had had time to say a prayer to Agni they were stopping, and opening the carriage door, and pushing her out.

Someone spoke, declaring the sentence against her. She didn’t hear it; she was staring at the sun, feeling its warmth on her skin and in her soul for the last time.

It felt good. She let it soak in, warming her from the inside.

* * *

_‘My baby dear, don’t fret, don’t cry_

_‘When Agni’s face is in the sky_

_‘He beams down on us with his grace,_

_‘And warms us with his smiling face.’_

She heard the rhyme in the back of her mind, and hummed along to it. She had learned that nursery rhyme, from her mother, when she was very small. Before she had even begun to firebend. Before she had a true understanding of what Agni’s grace really meant.

_‘He rises early every day_

_‘To bring us warmth, and now we say_

_‘We thank you, sun, and so we lift_

_‘Our fire to thank him for his gift.’_

She had used to say it every morning when she woke up and saw the sun in the morning. It had been as much a morning ritual as her meditation was now.

She wouldn’t have morning meditations, anymore. There would be nothing that told her when the sun was rising. The inner fire would be gone.

* * *

‘… that you be stripped of your bending,’ said the man who had been talking. He turned to her. ‘Have you anything to say?’

She shrugged. What was there to say? It would have been kinder to kill me? Please, have mercy?

She looked at the Avatar for the first time. She saw pity, which surprised her, and determination, which did not. His friends were standing nearby, arms crossed and scowls on their faces. She supposed they had a right to look that way. She had tried to kill them… hadn’t she? She thought so. Her memories of those days were fuzzy at best.

There was a scuffle in the crowd. She turned to look.

Three things happened at once.

First, someone – three someones – leaped from the crowd and ran towards her.

Second, Iroh _gasped_ and stumbled backwards.

And third, the earth shook, as the blind earthbender stamped her foot and flung up a wall of earth, separating Azula from the guards and the Avatar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. This chapter is short and (a bit) confusing. Not always the best way to follow up a first chapter (especially when it's gotten such a good reception, god _damn_ I was not expecting such a nice response). 
> 
> But! This is definitely the shortest of any of the chapters in this fic. We're in this for the long run baby. The next one is _quite_ a bit longer. 
> 
> (And, yeah, we don't know what happens to Azula and Team Zuko yet. In fact you will not find out until chapter five. Sorry, that's just how this one goes. We're still in the 'prologue'.)
> 
> Comment if you liked it! If you didn't like it, go ahead and tell me so in the comments! I'm going to sleep now and if I don't wake up to at least ten comments I'm deleting my account!
> 
> Survive!


	3. Iroh I (The Discussions)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a comment on the last chapter asking about degrees/radians in this fic. They're units of time; firebenders measure time based on the sun's position relative to the earth (or whatever planet atla happens on). A degree is four minutes, and a radian is about four and a half hours. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the chapter.

_Cure twenty rose petals at one-and-one-quarter chi for thirty degrees. Crush the dried petals, and cut in two pinches of freshly shredded ginger. Steep in just-boiled water for one degree, and pour immediately. Sweeten with honey if desired._

\- Recipe for rose-ginger tea

* * *

It was a shame what had been done to the palace, Iroh thought. War had corrupted the Fire Nation, certainly, but Ozai had gone a step further. In his days here, Iroh remembered it as having… more beauty. It had been more welcoming, in those days. Ozai had been Fire Lord for less than five years, and had turned it from a palace into a fortress. Windows had been closed off to protect against assassins, turning hallways that should have been spacious, sunlit spaces into gloomy corridors; tapestries and plants had been removed to minimize hiding space, making the walls bare and frigid.

It was strange how the center of the hottest nation in the world managed to be so _cold_.

He had never wanted to be Fire Lord. It had been a certainty when he was a child that he would one day be crowned ruler, but he had never looked forward to that day. And as he and Ozai grew older, and as he watched Ozai’s jealousy grow as well, he had wished there was a way to make peace between himself and his younger brother.

There had been, it turned out. It involved the death of his father, his only son, and his sister-in-law; and the banishment of his nephew Zuko.

But it was strange how the worst times of his life led to the best. The single happiest moment in his life was when Zuko had told him that he was happy with Iroh in Ba Sing Se, running the teashop. That night Iroh’s nightmares of his son’s death did not come to him, and were replaced with warm hope for the future.

The nightmares were not gone for long.

Now he was back in the palace and everything was wrong and right at the same time. Ozai was incapacitated. Azula was comatose. The Avatar was back. The war was over. But Iroh didn’t feel the sense of satisfaction he had hoped to feel. He didn’t feel the happiness that he had in that teashop in Ba Sing Se.

The palace was an ugly mark on the ugly city that had become nothing more than a military encampment. It shamed Iroh, the dishonor the Fire Nation had brought upon itself without seeing it. They had been so _blind_ – he had been so blind – thinking they were in the right. He had fought to break into Ba Sing Se with all the ignorant enthusiasm of a boy climbing for a finch-frog’s nest. Fire Nation cities were walled and guarded like fortresses, and the people inside didn’t seem to see the embarrassment of it.

It would change. It would be slow, but it would happen. This nation would heal, and the world with it.

The Avatar was back, wasn’t he? The world was saved.

* * *

‘General Iroh,’ Sokka said from behind him. Iroh blinked. His mind had been wandering.

‘Yes, Sokka,’ he said, turning and giving the boy a light bow. ‘What is it?’

‘My dad and I just got back from the prison. He wants to meet you.’

Yes. Sokka’s and Katara’s father, the chief of one of the Southern Water Tribes, had been imprisoned in Boiling Rock after the failed attack on the Day of Black Sun. Iroh regretted not being there to warn them. That mission could have been avoided, and lives saved, if he hadn’t made the mistakes he had.

He had much to atone for.

‘It will be my honor,’ he said. ‘Lead the way.’

Sokka led him through the palace to the front gate, where a double line of Water Tribe warriors and Earth Kingdom soldiers waited.

‘Dad,’ Sokka called. One of the Water Tribesmen stepped forward.

Iroh looked closely as he walked forward. The man walked like a soldier and a chief, confident and strong. He moved like a leader naturally, his carriage inherent in his nature, something Iroh knew Zuko had striven towards but never quite attained. It was something Ozai had ignored entirely, choosing instead the character of a tyrant; Ozai had always valued strength over wisdom. Hakoda was nothing like Ozai, Iroh could tell.

‘Chief Hakoda,’ Iroh said, bowing first. Though he would, technically, soon be Fire Lord, and therefore technically superior to this chief of barely a half-hundred people, he wanted to show respect. He wanted to show that the Fire Nation would no longer consider the peoples of the other elements beneath them.

Hakoda bowed as well. ‘General Iroh,’ he said. ‘My son has told me much about you. Thank you for helping my children, and for helping the Avatar.’

‘Your children do not need much of my help, Chief Hakoda,’ Iroh said with a smile. ‘They are wise and able beyond their years, and their actions have brought much honor to your family and tribe.’

‘Thank you,’ Hakoda said again.

‘Would you care for some tea?’ Iroh asked.

Hakoda hesitated. Iroh could tell that despite the pleasantries, the idea of actually sitting down and having a meal in a Fire Nation palace, with the future Fire Lord, was daunting to the man. A hundred years of all-out war tended to have that effect. Iroh hadn’t personally had any involvement with the campaign in the South Pole, but he had heard stories of the raids. He didn’t blame the man for his wariness. In fact, he was surprised the man had been this polite at all.

‘Dad, you should,’ Sokka said, either entirely oblivious or trying desperately to win Hakoda over to Iroh. ‘He has great tea. For a Fire Nation general, I mean.’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ Hakoda said finally, and Iroh led them into the palace.

* * *

Their conversation remained light. Instead of talking about reparations, or prisoners of war, or the surrender of land, they discussed tea, turtleducks, and Water Tribe cuisine. Iroh knew that the serious parts would be later; that he would have to meet with Earth Kingdom dignitaries who were even now circling like hawks hoping to take advantage of the perceived weakness of the Fire Nation. But for now he was happy to talk lightly with a man he quickly came to respect.

He _liked_ Hakoda, to his own surprise. The man was intelligent and honest. Besides, when Iroh asked him what kinds of tea they drank in the Water Tribe, he said ginseng was his favorite. Iroh agreed that ginseng was a noble tea, and asked a servant to bring a pot of it.

‘Have you ever been to Ba Sing Se?’ Iroh asked Hakoda near the end of their conversation.

‘No. But I’d like to go someday, now that the war is over.’

‘When you do, be sure to stop by the Jasmine Dragon teashop,’ Iroh said. ‘It was always a dream of mine to open a teashop. I haven’t had time lately, of course. But I hope to go back to it soon.’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ Hakoda said. ‘You have shown great hospitality and kindness, General Iroh,’ he said, standing and bowing. ‘I must go. It has been too long since my men and I have been home.’

‘Of course,’ Iroh said, standing as well. ‘It has been an honor to drink tea with you, Chief Hakoda.’

Sokka and Hakoda left with their fellow tribesmen in Water Tribe ships. Iroh watched them go. He wondered vaguely where the Avatar was; anywhere he wanted, probably. He had a great flying creature that could cross the world in three days, after all.

Now came the hard part.

* * *

Peace talks took a long time. First came the necessary official proclamations that the war was ended and that the Fire Nation would be standing their soldiers down, pulling back from any active engagements. Then came the initial meetings with ambassadors discussing the logistics of returning Earth Kingdom land. Then came meetings with dignitaries over the minutia.

It was exhausting. The children who had saved the world came and went, stopping in Capital City for a few nights as they flew around the world doing what Toph Beifong aptly called ‘Avatar stuff’. From what Iroh gathered, this consisted mostly of sightseeing, finding interesting animals and places.

(He sometimes wished he could go with them; but whenever he found himself longing for the freedom of a lifelong adventure, he would remind himself that he hated heights. Traversing the Earth Kingdom on an ostrich-horse was one thing, but crossing vast oceans, a thousand feet in the air, in a basket, on the back of a mythical creature, was another. He satisfied himself with the exotic teas that Aang took it upon himself to deliver whenever they visited.)

‘Your robe, Fire Lord,’ his servant Jai murmured. Iroh slid his arms into the sleeves, and Jai straightened the collar. ‘And your crown.’ The crown was set into Iroh’s hair and Jai gave him a once-over to ensure that everything was as it should be. Finally he nodded, looking almost disappointed there was nothing else to adjust.

‘Thank you, Jai,’ said Iroh, and Jai bowed. It had taken a while for the staff to get used to the idea of a _polite_ Fire Lord – none of them had known anything other than Ozai or Azulon, neither of whom tended to _thank_ their servants for helping them on with their robes. The first few times Iroh had thanked an attendant for a cup of tea – or a plate of dumplings, or a sheet of paper, or a comb, or a pen – they had looked as if they expected a trick, and nearly cringed away from him. But through the novel technique of basic human courtesy, he had done his part to change the culture of the Fire Nation’s upper class.

Today he would meet with a Magistrate Haolin, who ruled a sizable Earth Kingdom province in the south. The agenda included mostly talk of reparations for the destruction done to the province’s villages in one of the Fire Nation’s countless campaigns. Most of the damage had actually been done early on in the war, during one of the first invasions. Since then the Fire Nation had maintained a nominal occupation over the cities and towns of the province; the area had been fairly resource-poor, though, so the Earth Kingdom citizens had been left mostly alone.

Iroh knew that the Earth Kingdom would try and squeeze every last drop out of these negotiations, that they would push and push to see how much they could get out of him. It wasn’t a secret that he was the ‘weaker’ of Azulon’s sons, and it wasn’t a secret that much of his sympathy lay with the victims of the war. And the Earth Kingdom – and, he assumed, the Water Tribes, though so far they had kept mostly to themselves – intended to take advantage of him.

But he couldn’t bring himself to hold it against them. His people had caused theirs a hundred years of suffering. Feeding their people and rebuilding their homes was the least he could do.

(Not according to his cabinet, of course. They felt he was too easy – too weak – too soft. He could see it in their eyes, though they rarely dared say it out loud. He had gotten rid of most of the generals and advisors of Ozai’s regime, but they were all still so violently _Fire Nation_.

Why was it that the element of warmth, of comfort, of hearth and home, had been turned so completely to destruction and pain? Fire was for making tea, baking bread, drying clothes, warming the house on a cold night. But now it seemed like all his people knew how to do with it was burn things down. It was all they had – the center of their identity as a people – and they had turned it into nothing more than a weapon.)

‘Magistrate Haolin’s party has arrived, Fire Lord,’ his secretary said, leaning into Iroh’s chamber. ‘Shall I have tea made ready?’

‘Yes, thank you, Zhei,’ Iroh said. ‘I will meet the Magistrate in the Gray Room, yes?’

‘Yes, Fire Lord,’ Zhei said, and with a bow they were gone.

Iroh made his way through the palace to the Gray Room. In the past, on the rare occasions Ozai, Azulon, or Sozen met with a foreign dignitary, it was either in the throne room or in the audience chamber. Iroh refused to meet the dignitaries in the throne room. He considered it an arrogant and crude demonstration of power and position. And the audience chamber was hardly more suitable, especially for the peace talks he was currently conducting. It was plastered with red and gold, with an inordinate number of lit braziers along the walls. It screamed _fire_ , and Iroh’s whole goal was for eventual peace and unity between the nations.

So he had chosen the Gray Room for diplomacy. It was, as the name suggested, furnished mainly in tones of gray, a neutral color that suggested none of the nations. It was a clear demonstration that Iroh was acting not only for the Fire Nation but for the good of the world, and that it was possible that these goals were not mutually exclusive.

He sat in his chair and assumed a properly Fire-Lord-like posture, ready to receive the dignitary. Zhei brought in the tea and vanished moments before the door opened.

Two Earth Kingdom soldiers stepped in and took up positions next to the door.

Then two more, who stood on either side of the first two.

Then two _more_ , who stood by the adjacent walls.

Spirits, Iroh thought. This man either intended to impress or was far too paranoid. Possibly both. He wondered what his own guards thought of the little army parading through his doors. They had strict instructions not to enter the room – not to harass visiting dignitaries – not to _interact with them in any way_ unless Iroh specifically ordered them.

Or called for help, of course. Which hadn’t happened yet, and hopefully wouldn’t happen too often.

Finally Haolin himself entered the room. He was dressed in the formal, flowing, long green robes of the Earth Kingdom.

Iroh stood and bowed. ‘Magistrate Haolin,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Fire Nation. I hope you had a pleasant and uneventful trip?’ _Uneventful_ meaning, I hope none of my citizens tried to kill you.

‘Thank you, Fire Lord Iroh,’ Haolin said, and bowed in returned. ‘I did indeed have a pleasant and peaceful journey.’

‘Please sit,’ Iroh said. He poured them each a cup of tea. He noticed the magistrate’s raised eyebrows at the sight of the Fire Lord pouring the tea himself. He was surprised, as every other visitor had been.

But that was the whole point of these meetings, in Iroh’s opinion. Not much really got done on the surface. The discussions rarely ended with any great action being taken. Iroh’s promises were flimsy given the council’s stubbornness, the dignitaries’ promises were empty given they were making them to the _Fire Nation_. But beneath the surface was where Iroh was placing his hopes. He poured them tea to show that the new and improved Fire Nation was done with the pointless superiority complex. He bowed first to show that the Fire Lord was no longer _better_ than everyone else. He abandoned the wall of flames in the throne room for the same reason, and moved the throne to the head of the council table.

So the pouring of the tea may have been a small and unexpected gesture in the eyes of Magistrate Haolin, but to Iroh it was an extended hand of peace.

He could only hope they saw it in the same way.

When the rest of the polite small talk had been made and the first sips of tea taken, Iroh laid a piece of paper between them. It was the letter that Haolin had sent before coming, listing the reasons for the visit and the reparations that would hopefully be made as a result.

‘In your letter,’ Iroh began, ‘you mention the towns of Sang and Quan-Li. They were almost completely razed in General Jo-Ten’s campaign, near the beginning of the war. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Haolin said, almost dismissively. He waved a hand. ‘But I can already see from your courtesy and graciousness that these… trivial matters will be taken care of.’ He leaned ever-so-slightly forward in his seat. ‘I have spoken with several other court officials close to the Earth King. We hear that you have, in custody, the daughter of Ozai.’

‘That is true,’ said Iroh, slowly. This conversation was leaving the beaten path far too quickly for his liking. ‘My niece is being held securely and safely.’

‘The court officials, as well as myself, agree that it would be an honorable gesture of peace and goodwill, as well as publicly demonstrating your obvious desire for unity between our two nations,’ Haolin said, all in one slow measured breath, ‘if you gave the Earth King your niece’s hands.’

‘Azula’s hand in marriage?’ Iroh said blankly. ‘I'm afraid you may not understand…’

‘No, no,’ Haolin smiled. ‘Pardon me, I was not clear. We wish her hands. Both of them. Separate from the rest of her person.’

Iroh blinked. ‘…I see.’

‘She has committed many atrocities among our people,’ Haolin reminded Iroh, and there were teeth in his smile now. ‘She overthrew the last Earth King… she hurt and killed countless civilians both within and without Ba Sing Se… And she is an incredibly skilled firebender. A serious threat to the world, while she can still bend.’

‘I see,’ Iroh said again. ‘Of course, this must be taken under consideration. She is family, whatever wrongs she has done. And she is currently in a state of catatonia, unresponsive and barely breathing. She is fed liquids to keep her alive.’

Haolin’s distaste for the idea of _keeping Azula alive_ was clear on his face, though he didn’t say it out loud. All he said was, ‘Of course, you must think it over.’

* * *

He managed to put them off. A series of polite but firm letters, stating that while Azula was unresponsive there was no need to cause her harm, and that when she awoke – _if_ she awoke – they would revisit the topic.

He hoped that she would not awake.

Of course, the universe couldn’t have cared less what Iroh hoped, as it had showed him dozens of times in the past. Azula eventually woke up. Three peaceful years had passed, for which Iroh was grateful. A lot of progress had been made in that time.

He couldn’t have told exactly how, but the moment the servant burst through his door, eyes wide, he knew what she would say before she opened her mouth.

‘Fire Lord,’ she panted, bowing hastily. ‘Your niece—’

‘I am coming,’ he said, almost leaping to his feet. He hurried to her room, where he had had her chained and cuffed. She had been well taken care of in her sleep, but now he had no idea what he could do with or to her. Cutting off her hands was… one of the few options available to him. And if it became the only one, he would not hesitate to take it.

When he arrived at the door of her room, six armored guards were waiting. Firebenders, all of them, trained by him to redirect lightning, in preparation for this exact moment. None of them were… very _good_ , though. He nodded, and they pushed the door open and went in. He followed.

She was sitting on the bed, serene and proud. Her chains seemed less inhibiting than accessory; she looked like she had put them on for decoration.

‘Hello, uncle,’ she said.

‘Azula,’ he answered. He had steeled himself for this moment, and kept his voice as calm as possible. He had been in front of her for less than a half-degree and already he was worried he would _look_ worried. ‘How are you feeling?

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Chained up,’ she pointed out. ‘Not quite the way to show respect to the Fire Lord, uncle.’

‘You are no longer the Fire Lord, niece. I am.’

Her face stilled into a mask. He wondered what she had been imagining. That they would allow her to keep the crown? That they would keep the throne available for her?

Then in a flash, she thrust out her hands, and blue fire spiraled towards him. He blocked it easily – she was still weak from her long sleep – but even in the weakness he felt the strength that was returning to her. He realized dully that she was not going to make this easy. She was not going to make _keeping her hands_ easy. ‘Azula, please do not make this difficult. You will not be harmed here. This may be hard for you to hear, but I am here to tell you what has been happening.’ He hesitated. ‘Will you let me speak?’

‘I can hardly stop you.’

He told her what had happened. Nothing important, of course. Nothing secret. What he told her, any child in the Caldera slums could have told her. He told her that her father had no bending, and that he was imprisoned; that Zuko was missing, and that no one had heard from him in years.

He had thought she might react. She didn’t. Her expression did not change as he told the story. She attacked him with lightning; she almost killed a guard; he threatened her with punishments from the Earth Kingdom. Throughout all of it, she showed no more interest or emotion than a teapot.

He left the room deeply unsatisfied.

* * *

He sent letters, reluctantly, to the Earth Kingdom, informing them that Azula had awoken. They sent letters back, reminding him of their request, and saying that they would send someone to monitor Azula until she was neutralized.

That day, he was visited by Lady Lin. They were distant relatives – her grandfather had been Sozen’s brother-in-law – but her distaste for him was no secret. She had been a staunch supporter of Ozai, and her views had not seemed to change since the war ended. They hadn’t spoken much since Iroh’s coronation, and Iroh had been content to leave it that way. But she sent him a note requesting to speak with him, and he had accepted, hoping against hope that their talk would smooth the disagreements between them.

He greeted her in his personal office. She swept in, golden robes swaying and headdress bobbing. The woman liked to dress up, even for one-on-one chats where her appearance would make no difference at all. Perhaps she wanted the respect of the guards, Iroh thought as she sat in a chair and arranged herself grandly.

‘Fire Lord,’ she said. ‘Cousin. How are you?’

‘Well, thank you, Lady Lin,’ Iroh answered. He had made a conscious decision, degrees ago, to receive everything she said with a placid, open mind. He would not be upset by her. Her fingernail polish was a dark, striking gray, he noticed idly. An interesting color, which simultaneously clashed and harmonized with the muted gold of her dress. He wondered where they made such a polish; not the Fire Nation, not with the obsession with red and orange and gold that the people still had.

Lin noticed his study of the gray of her fingernails, and waved her fingers. ‘The polish?’ she asked. ‘Do you like it?’

‘An interesting color,’ Iroh said.

‘Thank you. I think so too. I’d wear gray all the time, if it weren’t that it looked like mourning.’ She settled herself with a final brush of her robes and set her hands in her lap. ‘I have some news, cousin.’

‘I would be delighted to hear it,’ Iroh murmured. He wondered whether she had ever called Ozai ‘cousin’. Most certainly not.

‘I have heard reports – _several_ reports – of a group of vigilante-type bandits roaming about the Earth Kingdom.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, hoping for a comment, but he only stared back with calm interest. He wasn’t surprised – there were bound to be ‘vigilante-type bandits’ after a war, and the Earth Kingdom’s police force was ill-equipped to deal with every corner of the nation.

‘They say that the leader wears a blue dragon mask,’ Lin said. ‘That the left side of his face is disfigured from a burn scar.’

Iroh kept his face carefully still, but on the inside he was shaking. Zuko. It had to be Zuko. He was alive, he was still alive – he was still acting as the Blue Spirit – he was in the Earth Kingdom. ‘Interesting indeed,’ he said, still blandly.

‘The scar matches that of your disgraced nephew,’ Lin went on.

‘Does it?’

‘Yes,’ Lin said. She smiled, and Iroh did not like that smile. It was the kind of smile he imagined a panda-shark made when about to make a kill. ‘It does.’ She stood. ‘Well, that was all I came to tell you, cousin!’ she said. ‘Of course I couldn’t write it out in a letter. Who knows who could have gotten their hands on it?’

 _You came so you could gauge my reaction and see if I knew_ , Iroh thought. _Or even if I'm working with him._ That was an interesting thought. Did Lin think he was somehow helping his nephew?

‘Of course,’ was all he said aloud. ‘It has been a pleasant talk, _cousin_. Have a good day.’

She waved, displaying the gray-painted nails once more, and left as grandly as she had come.

‘Zuko, you poor lost boy,’ Iroh said. ‘You should not have gone away.’

* * *

Only a few days later, the Avatar and his group – Team Avatar, as Sokka called them – arrived at the palace. Iroh invited them to dinner, of course.

They made polite talk until the food was served, but Iroh could tell that there was something on their minds. When the tea was served, Aang finally shifted uncomfortably and started to speak. ‘The Earth Kingdom asked me…’ he started, but Toph cut him off.

‘I’ll be the one telling it, thanks, Twinkletoes,’ she said. ‘So, Uncle. The Earth Kingdom has asked _me_ to stay here in the palace as ‘ambassador’ and watch over Azula. They wanted to ask Aang, but they weren’t _that_ stupid, obviously he’d be too busy. So they asked me. I mean, it’s an obvious choice, since I _am_ the greatest earthbender in the world—’ She paused as if in preparation for applause and agreement, then went on. ‘So if it’s _okay with you_ , I've been _politely asked_ by my king and country to live here for a week or so. As official ambassador to the Fire Nation.’

‘Ah,’ Iroh said. He felt… relieved, somehow. He didn’t like the Earth Kingdom interfering with his own nation, of course. But out of everyone they could have sent, he trusted Toph Beifong the most. She didn’t act like she cared but she _did_ , for one thing. She _cared_ more deeply than anyone he had ever met. And she was honest – brutally so – and was more likely to go to the Avatar than the Earth King if anything went wrong and needed action.

And, yes, she was the greatest earthbender in the world.

‘So?’ she asked. ‘Do I have the Fire Lord’s _permission_? They made a big deal about asking _permission_ , back in the Earth Kingdom.’

‘You are welcome at any time and for any reason in the palace, Miss Beifong,’ Iroh said. ‘It is my honor to host the greatest earthbender in the world. But…’ He hesitated. ‘Won’t it be _boring_?’

‘Yeah, Toph,’ Sokka said, a knowledgeable grin on his face. ‘Won’t it be boring? Won’t you be _lonely,_ here in this big palace, all by yourself? If only you had a _friend_ …’

‘Shut up,’ Toph growled. She shook hair in front of her face, but Iroh thought he saw a _blush_ appearing.

‘We should have made _friends_ last time we were here,’ Sokka went on. ‘We should have found something for you _to hang out_ with…’ A clod of dirt shot out from beneath the nearest potted plant and lodged in his mouth. He choked, but managed to say ‘Oh, wait! That Chun Hua girl we met last time seemed nice, you should…’ More dirt cut him off.

‘I’ll be _fine_ by _myself_ ,’ Toph growled. Iroh left it alone.

As Sokka scraped dirt off of his tongue, Katara asked, ‘How is she? Azula, I mean.’

‘My niece is… not well,’ Iroh said. ‘She is confused. Violent. She doesn’t remember much.’

‘Oh,’ Katara said.

* * *

The fact of Zuko’s continued existence hung on Iroh’s mind. He finally turned to the White Lotus to see if they could give help.

 _I need to find someone,_ he wrote. Even members of the White Lotus could not trust each other entirely, and his nephew was too important to risk.

They sent him a recommendation. Kosta, an earthbending bounty hunter. He could find anyone – track anyone – and if Iroh wanted to find someone, he was the best.

He was also very hard to send a letter to. When Iroh finally got a response from him, it was only that he was very busy at the moment and would get to Iroh when he could.

* * *

Toph had said she intended to stay for about a week. She ended up staying for almost half a year, while Iroh and the Earth Kingdom went back and forth trying to find a compromise (and did in fact spend quite some time with Lady Chun Hua, but Iroh decided it was safer not to comment).

Well, Iroh wanted a compromise. The Earth Kingdom was adamant that Azula be made completely harmless. Hands or head.

Toph wandered into his office one evening as he labored over yet another letter to the Earth Kingdom. ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked. She had taken to making sure Iroh got enough rest, which both touched and amused him.

‘Writing a letter to your king,’ Iroh said.

‘Writing. Fun. I love writing.’ She wandered around the room, fiddling with the little decorations his servants had used to brighten the room. ‘What's in the letter?’

‘Yet another request that they not insist on having my niece’s hands,’ Iroh said with a sigh.

‘Are they still on that?’ she asked. ‘God, they’re dumb.’

‘It is not an entirely unreasonable request,’ Iroh said. ‘Azula poses a threat even when chained. You have firsthand experience.’ Her escape attempts had lessened, but the courtyard still bore the marks of her fights with Toph.

‘Well, I know,’ Toph said. ‘But it’s stupid that they're so obsessed with the hands. Taking away the fire isn’t enough? They think she’s just going to make it come back or something?’

Iroh blinked. ‘…What?’

‘What?’

‘Taking away the fire?’

‘Yeah,’ Toph said. ‘Like… taking away her bending? What Aang did to Ozai?’

Iroh blinked again. ‘That… we hadn’t… we hadn’t actually considered that,’ he said finally, already feeling the prickle of embarrassment crawling up his neck and under his hair. _We really didn’t think of that?_

‘Slides above,’ Toph said, breaking into a laugh. ‘That wasn’t what this was all about?’

‘Well… no,’ Iroh said. ‘I suppose we just… assumed it was a… once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Toph said. ‘What would you do without me?’ She shook her head. ‘Well, I assume you have a whole lot of letters to write with this new groundbreaking information no one knew about.’ She snorted again. ‘ _Groundbreaking_. I am _hilarious_.’ She left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Iroh placed a new piece of paper on his desk, and began to write.

* * *

It turned out that the Earth Kingdom was never quite satisfied with anything. It took almost three weeks and a total of eighteen letters back and forth before they agreed that stripping her of her bending dealt sufficiently with the threat.

When they did, it was with the understanding that the punishment would be public. It would be a show, so that the world would know they no longer had anything to fear from Azula and, by extension, the Fire Nation.

Iroh told Azula, but she didn’t take it well, as was to be expected.

* * *

The night before the Avatar would arrive and take Azula’s bending, Iroh was in his room finishing a proposal to the council involving dismantling two-thirds of the military tanks. He dreaded presenting it, but knew that it would have to be done eventually.

Toph walked in. He noticed immediately that something was wrong.

‘Hey, Uncle,’ she said, but there was none of the playful bite that usually carried her voice.

‘Hello, Miss Beifong,’ Iroh said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I have to go soon. But…’ she trailed off.

‘Is something wrong?’ Iroh asked. ‘If you're concerned about the trial tomorrow, I can assure you nothing will go wrong. She will be heavily guarded and chained. She will not be a threat for long.’

Toph was silent for a few moments. Then she said, ‘Right. That’s all I needed. Thanks.’ And she was gone.

There was definitely something concerning her, Iroh knew. But he had no time to go after her now. He would wait till tomorrow.

After tomorrow, everything would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm excited for where this fic is going. Fun places, hopefully.
> 
> Kudos, comment, and subscribe! These things sustain me more than oxygen!
> 
> Survive!


	4. Toph I (The Dichotomy)

_The brightness and beauty of the flowers! The brilliant colors of every kind of creature, large and small! The shining sea and the golden sand! Such is the island of Har Ta Thoi; a sight like a gem: the gleaming jewel of the South._

\- from ‘A Voyage Between the Poles’, by Jan Sito, eleventh era

* * *

Toph didn’t get long to enjoy the freedom of life with the Gaang. Sure, they had adventured all over the world before the Day of Black Sun, but they always had to be on their guard. Zuko, and then Azula, were always right behind them, and they never really had time to _enjoy_ themselves.

Then they won the war, and were immediately whisked into the world of politics. They all hated it, Aang most of all, but he _was_ the Avatar. He had the responsibility to the world and blah blah blah. But whenever they could, they went off somewhere, the four of them (or five, since Suki seemed more and more to be joining them on trips) so Aang could ride some legendary creature or try some fruit that only grew in one place in the whole world. Toph wasn’t much for riding creatures (except for the one time Aang found a rockworm – _that_ was cool), but she did like the fruits.

And they would drop in every now and then on Iroh. The life of a Fire Lord, Toph quickly learned, was not one of pleasure and lounging. At least not the way Iroh did it. It was impressive, the way he threw himself into reformation, for the good of the world. It was almost scary how violently his own country pushed back. Aang brought him teas for relaxation, and Toph brought _herself_ because obviously her presence was gift enough.

They went on like that for three years – alternating between mind-numbingly dull weeks of politicking and talking nicely to idiot adults, and fun weeks together riding Appa back and forth across the world.

Then the Earth Kingdom ruined everything with their stupid politics. What was it Aang said sometimes? Harsh words won’t solve problems; actions will. Yeah, well, Toph was pretty sure that nice, polite, sugary words with _teeth_ behind them never solved any problems either. But the ‘request’ was very clearly a veiled threat, and she didn’t _really_ want to get on the bad side of her country anyway.

They called her – summoned her – to the Earth Council’s meeting room. Alone, which was never a good sign; at an hour before midnight, which was an even worse sign.

‘Toph Beifong,’ the man at the head of the table intoned. ‘As you probably know, the Fire Lord’s niece Azula has awoken from her state of unresponsiveness.’

Toph hadn’t known, as a matter of fact. Apparently no one told her anything these days. Azula awake? That was a third bad sign. But she nodded wisely.

‘While she can bend, she is a threat,’ the man said. ‘She is one of the most powerful benders in the world—’

‘One of,’ Toph muttered.

‘—and she must be made safe.’

Safe sounded good.

‘We are in the middle of negotiations with the Fire Lord at this moment, discussing the best way of removing this threat.’

Sounded even better.

‘You have shown great skill and wisdom, Miss Beifong, abilities beyond your years. And you are now almost a woman.’

Never mind, this was _not_ sounding good.

‘The Fire Lord, regrettably, has proven himself obstinate on the subject of his niece. So we are offering you the position of Ambassador to the Fire Nation in the name of the Earth King.’

Not good at all. ‘You want me to spy on Iroh and make sure Azula doesn’t break out.’ Heartbeats fluttered around the table, she noticed to her satisfaction.

‘We would never dream of asking you to spy, Miss Beifong. Simply observe and make reports.’

‘What if I don’t want to?’

‘Miss Beifong,’ the man said, voice hard and flat, ‘it is an honor to serve your country, is it not?’

So she had agreed to do it, mostly because she didn’t want to end up at Lake Laogai (which was _officially_ now simply a storage facility, but the only deliveries being made were steel six-foot-cubic carriages that were padlocked and guarded, she guessed they thought they were being subtle).

But partly because, deep down, somewhere she wouldn’t admit even to herself that it existed, she thought it was the right thing to do. And Toph did what she thought was right, without fail. It was part of being earth – you had something that you believed, and you followed it, like a compass aligning with the earth itself.

Anyway, Chun Hua was in the palace, so it couldn’t possibly be all bad.

* * *

So the next time Team Avatar dropped by the palace, they left her behind. Iroh was very nice about the whole thing, not so much as suggesting the idea of ‘spy’. Ambassador Beifong this and that, and she settled into palace life without _too_ much culture shock. She had been to the palace before.

Just never with a _title_.

Now, everyone bowed when they saw her, and when they gave her stuff, and when she gave _them_ stuff, and when she came into a room, or when she left a room. Fire Nation servants were big on bowing. It was weird, the different ways people showed respect. Back home it was all about what you said and how you said it. In the Water Tribes, respect was about actions and bonds, and _trust_ , which she had had to get used to with Sokka and Katara.

The Fire Nation treated respectfulness like makeup – something you put on in public when you wanted to impress. A façade that didn’t reflect how you really thought or felt at all.

Toph had never been one for makeup. She didn’t see the point, really.

See the point. Ha.

* * *

She had been there only two days before Azula tried to escape. It was a frantic few minutes of dodging and bending and blocking, and then Toph knocked the ex-princess down and guards piled on top of her, and dragged her back to her prison-slash-bedroom, and that was that. It was strangely anticlimactic; this woman – girl? How old was she now? – had hunted Aang and the rest of them across the world, always a looming threat. Toph hadn’t seen her for five years. And now, after all that, she beat the great Azula in a fight that barely lasted two minutes.

Chun Hua had seen it, though. Part of it, at least. She came up to Toph later and said she had been watching from a window across the courtyard, and that Toph had been amazing. Toph’s cheeks lit up like a bonfire and she asked if Chun Hua wanted to ‘practice… bending. Sometime. Together.’ and Chun Hua had said _yes_ so it hadn’t been a complete waste of time after all.

* * *

Azula tried to escape again.

And again.

And again.

She never got far. She never even got to the gates – Toph was always there, somehow stronger and faster and _better_. Now, Toph would be the first person to admit that ‘humility’ was low on the list of her personal character traits. Possibly on a different list altogether. But the last time she had fought Azula hadn’t felt… like _this_. This was too easy. And not even the kind of ‘too easy’ where Azula was planning something nefarious and only pretending to fail – this was something different. This Azula had been broken on the day of Sozen’s Comet, and what came out was something changed and fractured. Toph didn’t know too much about firebending styles and forms, but she was fairly sure ‘screaming and spewing fire out of everywhere like a human firework with no aim or precision whatsoever’ wasn’t one of them.

She was barely breaking a sweat. And the last time she had fought Azula, she had almost _died._ The lightning had burned into her back and shoulders, and she had lost her earth-sight for days.

Azula was taken to the freezer after an escape attempt. They left her in there for nine hours. When they brought her out, she was shaking and barely able to move. Toph followed them as they dragged her down the halls to her room.

There was something wrong with Azula.

* * *

On the third week of her stay in the palace, Toph met someone she didn’t like.

‘Hello, Miss Beifong,’ someone said from behind her. ‘Can I have a word?’

Toph turned. Of course it didn’t matter to _her_ which way she was facing in a conversation, but she had learned that most people tended to talk more concisely when you were pointed at them. Weird, but not everyone got to be the greatest earthbender in the world.

‘My name is Lady Lin,’ said the woman who was apparently named Lady Lin. ‘I'm a cousin of the Fire Lord. It’s wonderful to meet you.’

She stepped closer. After a moment, she said, ‘Ah,’ and Toph realized she had _probably_ been holding out a hand to shake or kiss or whatever it was people did in this country. ‘How are you settling in?’

‘Fine,’ Toph said.

‘And the palace? You’ve had people… show you around?’

‘I can find my way around fine,’ Toph said, supremely tired of this conversation already.

‘I've just wanted to say hello for a _while_ now,’ Lin went on. ‘But you’ve been so busy, of course. The Ambassador to the Fire Nation! Exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Sure,’ Toph said. ‘As a matter of fact, I have an ambassador-y thing I have to go to right now. Very important, I'm sorry I can’t talk longer, must go.’ She turned and walked away, focusing on the sound of her own heartbeat to drown out Lady Lin’s goodbye.

Something about that woman got on her nerves. Her entire personality grated on Toph’s, like an out-of-tune instrument ruining an orchestra. It wasn’t any one thing in particular; just the entirety of her being.

Also, _It’s wonderful to meet you_ had been a lie. So there was that.

* * *

She came to observe as they took Azula to the freezer one more time. Not for any particular reason; not out of pity, she was sure.

Pretty sure.

Just to observe.

When the guards went away she went to the door and listened. Azula was babbling, weeping like a child, begging for help or mercy. There was nothing left of the single-minded determination that had driven Azula when she had almost broken her way into Ba Sing Se. She was the fourteen-year-old girl, now, that she had never been allowed to be before. And the girl was terrified at what she had done, and what was being done to her.

The pleading stopped, eventually.

* * *

It was nighttime. For most people, that meant it was harder to see; for Toph, it meant her feet got colder on the stones in the palace courtyard.

There were guards patrolling along the perimeter, but she muffled her footsteps, killing the vibrations in the stone that would have made noise. She slipped by them and out of the palace.

It wasn’t illegal, what she was doing. Not all of it. But she didn’t want anyone to know, for reasons that even she wasn’t quite sure of; she didn’t want to have to talk to people about her actions and the reasons behind them. That was a bit of a defining characteristic of her life, after all. Not answering to anyone.

So she crept through the city, to the last remaining military building in Capital City: the prison. Currently it had only two inmates.

Ozai’s cell was at the very end of the very lowest hallway. Toph could have gone through the doors without being seen, probably. But it was much less bother to simply tunnel through the earth and pop out right outside his cell.

He was awake. His heartrate fluttered a bit, right as she pushed the flagstones aside to help her into the hallway, but it slowed again as she stepped into the open air. This was a man, the breathing and the heartbeats told her, who had given up on caring.

She stood there in silence for a few minutes, just listening to him. The shifting of his beard on his chest – the labored rasp of his breathing, probably from a dry throat – the circle he was rubbing on the stone floor with the pad of his thumb. He was sitting slumped against a wall, head bowed.

‘Ozai,’ she said finally. He didn’t answer. ‘What is bending?’

He raised his head and leaned it back against the wall. ‘Life.’

‘You're alive.’

‘No.’

She understood, in a way. She had no sympathy for Ozai, but she understood, at least, how he might feel. If she had no bending… she really would be blind. It would be darkness without so much as feeling.

‘I think I know—’ she said.

‘No,’ he said again. ‘If you lost your bending, little girl, you would be blind. If we lose our bending, we lost _everything_.’ He hissed out the word, with a fury she hadn’t known his laboring lungs could muster. ‘I cannot feel the sun.’

‘ _I_ can’t see _anything_ —’

‘It is not the same. And you—’ His voice twisted into a sneer. ‘You cannot understand. Things of the dirt cannot comprehend things of the sun.’ His chin fell onto his chest again. ‘Is my daughter alive?’

Toph hadn’t expected that question. ‘Yes…’

‘She shouldn’t be.’

‘What?’

‘If Iroh is Fire Lord, Azula lost an Agni Kai. If she is alive, she did not fight to the death.’ He spat. ‘ _Weak._ My children are _weak…_ ’

…That was more like it.

‘Well, you're both just as locked up,’ Toph said. ‘And _you've_ got no fire.’

‘Go away, earth girl. You needed the Avatar himself to best me.’ He coughed, a hacking, dry cough. ‘You are a child at a table set for gods.’ He coughed again, and rolled onto his side.

‘You're dying,’ Toph realized.

‘I died five years ago,’ Ozai said, and that was the end of the conversation.

* * *

The next day Toph was by the pond, minding her own business. She had found bread in the kitchens – ‘found’ being a much better word than ‘stolen’ – and had sprinkled crumbs around her to bring the turtleducks close enough to pet.

She felt the footsteps – tap, tap, tap, like fingernails tapping on a piece of river stone – and recognized the breathing a moment before Lady Lin said, ‘Ambassador Beifong! How are you today?’

Toph wondered how rude the Fire Nation considered it to simply walk away from a conversation. Probably quite rude. She wondered how much trouble she would actually get in. Probably not too much.

‘I was doing fine,’ she muttered.

‘Wonderful! May I have just a moment of your time?’

Toph didn’t answer, which Lin apparently took as sweeping acquiescence. ‘Well,’ she said, lowering her voice dramatically, as if worried that they might be overheard, ‘ _I_ heard that last night someone _broke into_ the Capital City prison.’

Toph tried her very best to ignore her.

‘It was an _earthbender_ ,’ Lin went on. ‘They could tell. They had broken in just in front of the Phoenix King’s cell—’

‘Ex-Phoenix King,’ Toph broke in. ‘Phoenix King emeritus. I think he’s just Ozai now, isn’t that right?’ It wasn’t any big secret that Lin had been a staunch supporter of Ozai all the way to the end. If it had been anyone other than Iroh who took the throne, Lin would have been out of the palace ages ago. But Iroh was _nice_ , so Lin was allowed to go on _being_. Being incredibly obnoxious, most of the time. And poking her nose into everyone’s business, apparently.

Lin’s voice, when she finally spoke, sounded like she had bitten into a lemon. ‘Right,’ she said. She rallied quickly. ‘Well, anyway, _fascinating_ , isn’t it? Imagine, an _earthbender_ breaking into the most secure prison in the Fire Nation, right underneath our noses?’

‘Why are you telling me this, exactly?’ Toph asked.

‘My goodness, you do get to the point quickly, don’t you? I have read that that’s quite an important trait among the people of your nation, bluntness… Well, I just thought you should _know_. After all, if there’s an earthbender sneaking around, up to no good, you would certainly be the one we’d count on to catch them, wouldn’t you?’

‘Right,’ Toph said. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Good,’ Lin said, her voice a smile that reminded Toph of those berries in Shang Gao valley that had tasted nice at first but left a horrible waxy aftertaste. ‘Have a wonderful day, Ambassador Beifong.’

She walked away, the heels of her shoes clicking irritatingly on the stones of the courtyard. How fitting, Toph thought, that the woman manifested her presence in such an obnoxious way. Her personality was worse, so it was a sort of taster for the conversation to come.

‘Hello, Ambassador Beifong,’ came another, far more welcome voice. ‘How are you today?’

‘Chun Hua,’ Toph said, a smile coming to her face without her knowing it. ‘I just talked to Lady Lin. How do you think I feel?’

‘Ah,’ Chun Hua said, and Toph heard a smile in her voice too. ‘My condolences. May I join you?’

‘Sure,’ Toph said. ‘Watch the turtleducks.’

She felt Chun Hua sit – carefully, so as not to disturb the turtleducks moving about for the crumbs – and sigh. ‘It’s nice here,’ she said. ‘You know, the only one I ever saw at this pond was Azula? Ozai’s daughter.’

‘What?’ Toph asked. ‘Really? The turtleduck pond?’

‘Yes,’ Chun Hua said. ‘She came here every now and then, right after we took Ba Sing Se…’ She hesitated.

‘It’s fine,’ Toph snorted. ‘ _I_ didn’t live there.’

‘…Right.’

‘Somehow I can’t picture scary lightning lady here, playing with turtleducks.’

‘I know,’ Chun Hua said, with another sigh. ‘She fed them. My room is right over… right above the kitchens. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I used to look out the window during the day. She never saw me – if she had, I probably still wouldn’t be here – but early in the morning, before anyone was around, she would feed the turtleducks. She was so delicate about it, too, like she thought they would break if she touched them. It was almost funny.’

‘Except for the scary lightning,’ Toph said.

‘Except for that.’

‘Huh,’ Toph said. She laid back, making sure not to squash a turtleduck. The sun was warm on her face.

‘So what did Lady Lin want to talk about?’ Chun Hua asked after a while.

‘Oh, stones,’ Toph groaned. ‘I think she just doesn’t like me. There was a break-in at the prison last night, apparently. I think she thought I knew something about it.’

‘A break-in?’ Chun Hua asked. ‘To Capital City Prison?’

‘Yeah,’ Toph said. ‘That’s what she said.’

‘I don’t know of any other time that’s happened,’ Chun Hua said. Her heartbeat started to rise. ‘Who could possibly have broken into that place? It’s the most…’

‘Hey,’ Toph said. ‘It was an earthbender. That’s why she thinks I know something about it. They tunneled in through the ground. No one got away.’

‘Well, there’s only one person there, anyway,’ Chun Hua said. ‘It wouldn’t be hard to check, right?’ She laughed. It was forced, but her heartrate had calmed back down.

‘Wait,’ Toph said after a moment. ‘One?’

‘Ozai,’ Chun Hua said.

‘There’re two,’ Toph said. ‘Aren’t there?’ She had certainly felt two, that night. She had needed to figure out which was Ozai by their hearts.

‘No,’ Chun Hua said. ‘Just Ozai. I’m pretty sure.’

‘Oh,’ Toph said.

* * *

Her talk with Ozai bothered her, and she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t that she felt sorry for him. Not at all; in fact, she would have gladly ended his life even now. It was something about how he had been so sure she didn’t understand firebending. She _thought_ she did; they drew energy from the sun, chi within them created fire, blah blah blah, but Ozai had almost _laughed_ at her.

And if she didn’t understand something, she tended to want to break it. If she really _didn’t_ know about firebending, she would either learn, or get rid of the biggest threat. That threat being Azula, of course.

She went to Iroh. He was sitting at his desk, probably doing nothing too important. ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked. The man, Fire Lord though he was, spent too much time on work and not enough on pretty much anything else. Toph knew he desperately wanted to atone for what his family had done to the world. It was that Fire Nation honor again – Iroh felt that the Fire Nation had dishonored itself by its actions, and wanted to set things right.

‘Writing a letter to your king,’ Iroh said. Toph could hear the weariness in his voice.

‘What’s in the letter?’

Iroh sighed. ‘Another request that they not insist on having my niece’s hands.’

The Earth Kingdom thought the hands were the problem. It bothered Toph, that they were so fixated on that one thing. Azula was a threat – had been a threat – to the world, hands or no. It was her heart, her drive, her single-minded determination that made her so dangerous. If she had no hands, she would still be able to breath fire. And even if they took the fire away, she would still be _Azula_.

Right? Except Ozai had said Toph didn’t get it. Ozai had said he was already dead. Ozai was broken, in his cell, nothing left of the king he had been.

And Azula was crumbling more and more every day. She had been broken, in that freezer, screaming and crying and _begging_.

(She had fed the turtleducks, early in the morning, when no one was around; she had given them bread and treated them like glass.)

‘Taking away the fire isn’t enough?’ Toph asked. ‘They think she’ll just regrow the hands or something, huh.’

Iroh’s heart jumped. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Toph asked back.

‘Taking away the fire?’

And Toph reevaluated her opinion of the Earth Kingdom. They weren’t doing this for the safety. They were doing it for the power. They couldn’t care less about whether Azula could bend or not. They just wanted to have the _hands of the Fire Lord’s niece_ as a demonstration of strength.

They were pompous, probably a bit sadistic, idiotic, bureaucrats. Toph was embarrassed to be part of the same nation.

Iroh, of course, wasn’t to blame for not having thought of having Aang take away Azula’s fire. He was a _nice_ person. And he was probably spiritual enough to think it was a one-time, hour of great need, save the world Avatar-y kind of thing. But it _probably_ wasn’t, knowing Aang and how he tended to be so annoyingly good at everything he tried to do.

After the obligatory self-praise, she left him to it. She had wanted to find out about firebending, but had apparently provided important diplomatic information instead. Well, they couldn’t all be wins.

* * *

One morning she woke up to the feeling of a lot of people moving in the same direction all at once and quickly. She poked her head out of her room. ‘What's going on?’ she asked a nearby servant, who immediately bowed.

‘Ambassador Beifong,’ she said. ‘It’s Azula. She has taken very ill.’

‘All those people…?’

‘Doctors and guards, my lady.’

‘Thanks,’ Toph said. She went back to sleep.

* * *

That night she went to see Azula. Ozai’s words had been hanging over her, and she didn’t know what else to do.

Outside the door, she stopped and listened. She could hear Azula thrashing and moaning. She was _really_ sick. She pushed the door open.

‘I'm sorry, I’m sorry, I'm sorry…’ Azula was whimpering. As Toph stepped into the room, Azula let out a gasp. ‘Mother,’ she whispered. ‘Mother, please forgive me…’

She sounded unhinged. She was on the bed, so Toph couldn’t really ‘see’ what she was doing, but… her breathing was closer. She had sat up. She was panting as if she had run a long way.

‘I'm not your mother,’ Toph managed to say. She wondered if it was the right thing to say. Probably not, since Azula sank back, a sob forcing itself from her lungs. ‘I'm sorry,’ Azula mumbled. ‘I'm so sorry… I never meant…’ She trailed into incoherency, asking the mother she thought she saw for forgiveness.

‘I'm not your mother,’ Toph said again, almost afraid. She backed to the door. This had been a mistake.

‘I'm sorry,’ Azula said again, and Toph opened the door and fled.

* * *

She sat in her room and tried not to think about Azula. Which of course only made her think about Azula. Slides, the girl had sounded terrified. Toph realized that Azula, for all her scary lightning fire, was only _two years_ older than she was. And she had spent five years in a coma, so… mentally she was only about fifteen.

It was too much all at once. Azula was pleading for forgiveness. She _knew_ she had done wrong. Her bending was going to be taken away. Toph wondered if Iroh had told her. Probably not yet; he was nice enough not to make her live in fear, even for these few weeks. But the trial would be soon – the _execution_ would be soon, she knew Aang would do it, he saw in platitudes and morals and black and white and there was surprisingly little flexibility in him for someone supposedly so airbender-y. It was part of what made him such a good earthbender.

And even though Toph was the _greatest_ , she could see that there was something wrong with what they were going to do to Azula. She didn’t _deserve_ it. Whatever Ozai had meant, whatever he had been trying to say with all of that – it meant that taking firebending was bad for the firebender. She understood that much, at least, even if she didn’t get all the stuff about the sun and the spirit and whatever.

She didn’t know what to do.

* * *

It took a while longer for her to really decide. Earth didn’t change courses quickly. It was slow to change, slow to move, ponderous in its decision-making. It took its time, even when the courses were as easy as black and white.

And in this case, of course, she could see nothing but gray.

When she had decided she _could not let_ this happen to Azula – Azula who had wept for the mother that had vilified and left her, and who could not remember what evils she had done but knew that she had done them – she went to Iroh, to ask him to call off the trial.

It was the night before. Aang and the rest of them would arrive in the morning, and Azula would have her powers stripped away.

She knocked on his door.

‘Come in,’ he said. Stones, he sounded tired. She was tired too, but in a different way. He pushed himself physically, and she had just… been losing sleep over Azula and what would happen to her.

‘Hey, Uncle,’ she said. She hadn’t planned how to say this. _Hey, the big trial thing that you’ve made public for months now, could you call it off? I know that the Earth Kingdom might actually declare war, and that you think Azula’s a violent psychopath who only wants to hurt people, but actually she might not be all that bad?_

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he broke in. His voice was so calming that it made her want to cry.

‘No, thanks. I have to go… soon… But…’And then she stopped. _Can you please not do what you intend to do?_ She could only speak from experience. But it never worked. People never listened – not really, not even Iroh – when you wanted them to do something different than what they wanted. Her _frequent_ dealings with the Earth King’s cabinet had shown her that.

‘If you’re concerned about the trial,’ Iroh said, and she could tell that he _really_ was, ‘I can assure you nothing will go wrong. She will be heavily guarded and chained. She…’ He hesitated, and sighed, the miserable sigh of an uncle damning his niece. ‘She will not be a threat for long.’

And she knew, when he said that, that his mind was made up. It wasn’t only earthbenders who knew how to stand her ground. He wanted to do this even less than she did, but he _would_ do it, because he believed from the bottom of his heart that it was the right thing to do. He believed it with the same certainty that he believed the sun would rise next morning.

And maybe it was. But Toph didn’t think so, and Toph was the greatest earthbender in the world, and Toph did what she thought was right.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s all I needed. Thanks.’ And she left before he could ask her what was wrong.

It would be a long time before the trial. It wasn’t quite midnight yet – she could tell by how cold the stones were beneath her feet – and the trial would be around noon the next day.

But she couldn’t possibly sleep. Not now.

She had been alone before. It was how she had lived her life before Aang dropped into it. It wasn’t a new experience to know that she would have to be by herself from now on.

Because she couldn’t let this happen. And Iroh, and Aang, and everyone else, couldn’t _not_.

But she would do what she thought was right. She always did.

* * *

She sat by the turtleduck pond that night, feeling the turtleducks sleep. They nested by the side of the water, cuddled up to each other, heads almost in their shells but not _quite_. She spent a lot of time, now, focused on each one of them, making sure she got each detail as perfectly as possible. Everything had to be right. She might never be around them again, after all.

She stayed through the night and into the morning. When the sun finally began to rise, she felt someone approach – light step, quick heel-to-toe, rose perfume, heartbeat like _that_ – and knew it was Chun Hua before she announced herself.

‘Good morning, Toph,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Have you been out here long?’

‘Could you see me from your window?’

‘When I woke up you were already out here.’

Toph nodded.

‘Is everything okay?’

Toph drew in a deep breath and let it out, grounding herself and her vibrations into the earth beneath her. ‘Everything’s fine. Kind of.’

‘If you want to talk…’

‘The trial’s today.’

Chun Hua shifted on her feet, and cautiously sat down. ‘Right.’

‘You like me, right? We’re friends?’

‘Of course,’ Chun Hua said. ‘Toph, is something wrong?’

‘I just might not be able to hang out with you for a while.’

‘Oh. The trial.’

‘…Yeah. I guess…’

They sat there for a while. The turtleducks started to wake up. Toph felt them stretch and shake themselves, then launch into the water. Once they went into the water, they became blurry and indistinct, so she could never tell what exactly they were doing. They made little noises as they floated back and forth, bumping into each other and batting each other with their wings. Toph tried to _remember_ , to record how it all felt.

‘I don’t know why I'm like this,’ she muttered. ‘Anyway. I'm glad to be your friend, Chun Hua.’

‘I'm glad to be your friend too, Ambassador Beifong,’ Chun Hua said, and she sounded a bit flustered. If she was feeling any better, Toph would have given a shark grin and said something about it. But she chose to _feel_ instead, feel Chun Hua’s breathing and heart and little shifting movements.

It was nice, in the sun, by the turtleduck pond.

And there was a trial that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost out of the prologue, folks! One more (rather short) chapter - which I shall call an interlude - and then we'll get back to Zuko and... them. We need a name for that group. Any suggestions? (Yes, this is a shameless grab at comments.)
> 
> The interlude will be posted during the night of the 16th-17th, and then the next chapter will appear like magic sometime during that next week. I'm trying desperately to keep some kind of chapter buffer, since I've got _too many_ papers to write between now and the end of the month. But we'll get back to the Fire Hazard siblings by the 25th at least. 
> 
> Also, if anyone is up for beta-ing, please step forth! I don't need, like, a _heavy duty_ beta. Mild grammar, continuity, and whether-this-makes-sense-to-anyone-outside-my-head. 
> 
> Kudos, comment, subscribe! Thank you to all of you who have been so nice so far! 
> 
> Survive!


	5. Interlude I (Sokka and Lin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's focusing on this fic rather than preparing for my upcoming, third-of-my-grade, do-you-want-to-get-into-college-or-not, presentation! 
> 
> And it's the last chapter of the prologue! Woo! Once this is over, sausage really starts rolling. 
> 
> Hmm. That didn't sound as terrible as I wanted it to. Anyway.

_ The balance of nature depends on the harmony of the people. If one element is too strong, or another too weak, then the world will be thrown out of balance. It is for this reason that the Avatar must return again and again to the world, to ensure its continuation. _

\- from “On the Nature of the Spirit Realm” by Professor Iyazo

* * *

Sokka was  _ cold.  _ Now, he was no stranger to cold. He was from the Southern Water Tribe. He lived in the  _ South Pole _ . A world-tour with the Avatar had quickly taught him that the harsh cold was  _ not _ actually the default climate. He lived in a house made of ice half the time.

But it was cold.

‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ Katara said, ducking under the curtain that served as their door.

‘You made it too icy.’ 

‘We’re in an igloo, Sokka. If there’s ice that means I did it right.’

Sokka had hung blankets on the walls in an effort to stay warm. Normally igloos did that job well enough. The ice trapped the heat and kept out the cold, and everything was nice and, if not toasty, at least livable. But either Katara was making the igloos wrong or the ice was especially cold this year or  _ something _ , because Sokka was  _ freezing _ . And he had been for a few weeks now.

‘It’s too cold.’

Katara raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Feels fine to me.’

‘Yeah, you're all crazy, that’s why.’ Sokka said. ‘I've never been so cold.’

‘Maybe you're sick.’

‘I'm not sick.’

‘You're probably sick. You're wearing sleeves, for goodness’ sake.’

‘Yeah? And so what if I am? It’s the only thing keeping me from freezing to death.’

‘Sokka, it’s really not that cold.’

‘Whatever,’ Sokka said. He didn’t feel sick. He felt fine. Except for this stupid  _ cold _ which apparently no one else seemed to notice.

They had been out here for a week and a half. It had been Bato’s idea – a bunch of people from Hakoda’s tribe as well as some of the neighboring tribes to the east had all decided to get together to form a rather large hunting party. Hunting what, Sokka had asked, and had not enjoyed the grin that appeared on Bato’s face.

It had turned out that they were hunting seal-sharks. Great, slippery, scratchy things with mean streaks, too many teeth, and not enough spots to stab. They had a lot of meat on them though, so Sokka eventually decided it wasn’t too bad. The payoff was worth the risk. Probably.

What he hadn’t considered was that it was going to be so incredibly cold. He had gone straight from Capital City to the actual southernmost point in the world. Keep going any further and you started to go north again. They were as far  _ down  _ as you could get which meant they were as  _ cold  _ as you could get, and even though everyone else seemed to be completely fine and dressing like normal…

Sokka was cold.

So when Katara rolled her eyes, grabbing the bag she had come in for, and left the tent, Sokka curled up in a blanket and tried not to shiver.

* * *

The next day was the last day of their trip. Bato had gotten his fill of seal-shark – Sokka had to admit that meat was worth the cold – and the tribes all had plenty to do back home. Sokka was out with Hakoda on a boat. Katara and he had been trading their dad back and forth, since the boats they were using were only large enough for two people.

‘You cold, Sokka?’ Hakoda asked. Sokka was wearing a cloak of two furs he had stitched together.

‘A little,’ Sokka said, teeth chattering.

‘Are you sick?’

‘No! I'm fine! It’s just  _ really cold _ down here. How am I the only one feeling it?’

His dad frowned. ‘Maybe you just need to move around a little. Here, take the sheet—’ He shifted, allowing Sokka to grab the line. ‘Work for a while and you'll warm up.’ It sounded good, but all that happened was that Sokka worked up a sweat. Then when his arms got tired he felt twice as cold.

They had been on the water for about three hours without seeing any sign of a seal-shark. The creatures swam in packs, but they rested on icebergs by themselves. That was when it was easiest to hunt them; a group of five or six seal-sharks could capsize a boat and eat the crew in less than three minutes if provoked. 

‘There’s one,’ Hakoda said finally, pointing to the left. Sokka squinted. It was a  _ big  _ one, probably an older bull.

‘He’s big.’ Sokka said.

‘So are we,’ his dad said, his spear at the ready. ‘And I’ve got a spear, remember?’

‘I have boomerang.’

‘I know you do. Bring us in closer.’

Sokka did. When they were within striking distance, the seal-shark rolled over and glared at them with one flat eye.

‘Gotcha,’ Hakoda said, and lunged. But – there was always a  _ but _ , Sokka thought wearily as he watched – the seal-shark rolled over again and dodged the spear by about a half-inch. The point of the spear skid against the ice and slipped, causing Hakoda to fall out of the boat. 

‘Dad!’ Sokka shouted. Hakoda pulled himself onto the ice, where the bull seal-shark was waddling around, getting ready to charge. The teeth, Sokka reminded himself. The  _ teeth _ . All four rows, and jaws strong enough to bend a steel blade. Why were they doing this again? ‘Jump back!’

‘I’d flip the boat,’ Hakoda said, eyeing the seal-shark, who was scraping the ice menacingly. ‘Pull back a little and when this guy’s dead, come in and help me roll him onto—’

The seal-shark charged. Sokka watched it all in slow motion – the creature lunged, Hakoda jumped to the side, and threw his weight onto the studs of his boots as he came down. As the seal-shark skidded to a stop to turn and face Hakoda, he stabbed forward, leaning almost horizontal, and jumped, pushing the spear down the seal-shark’s throat. The beast threw its head back. The spear, sticking out of its mouth, flew out of Hakoda’s hands and knocked him off the ice and into the water.

‘Dad!’ Sokka shouted again. He threw a weighted line onto the ice (something you were never supposed to do, it did almost nothing to keep the boat in place, old Wodata would have kicked him around the campfire) and jumped onto the ice. ‘Grab my hand!’

Hakoda was treading water on reflex, his nose barely above the water. Too dazed to reach for Sokka. The butt of the spear had hit him across the jaw.

‘Spirits.' Sokka muttered, and jumped in. As soon as he touched the water, his muscles tensed up and his sinuses felt like they were about to pop. He struggled to stay afloat, but somehow he managed to half-lift, half-drag Hakoda to the ice. Finally, he climbed out, hissing at the ice-cold air, and pulled Hakoda up and out. ‘Come on, dad. Come on, stay awake…’

‘Okay, okay,’ Hakoda murmured, blinking and rubbing his temples. ‘Did we get…’

‘Yeah, we got him,’ Sokka said. ‘We’re also going to get hypothermia and die.’

‘Use his heat.’ Hakoda said. ‘Help me…’ He staggered to his feet and tried to drag the creature across the ice toward the boat. Sokka helped him, musterring as much effort as he could to fight off the urge to sit down and rest. He was so tired…if he could just sit down for a minute…

It was the cold talking – the  _ fucking cold _ – and he could feel the water freezing on his back and arms as he worked. His fingers were numb. You died in minutes once you came out of the water out here. He had seen it happen once, when he was a boy. Kaito, from the neighboring tribe, had slipped and fallen, climbed out of the water, and frozen to death before he could make it back to a village.

The seal-shark’s blood was steaming on the ice. Sokka touched it and hissed, the sudden heat burning his fingers. Another very bad sign.

When it was finally on the boat, Hakoda started tearing it open, the steam coming off of the insides almost as thick as smoke. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Get close to it. You’ll have to steer… my hands are…’

‘Yeah, dad,’ Sokka said. ‘Relax in the comfort of seal-shark warmth.’

Sokka brought them back to camp. The seal-shark had cooled before they had fully dried off, which meant that the last three minutes of the journey were spent in a half-conscious daze of mid-stage hypothermia. They stumbled off the boat and watched Bato and Katara run towards them.  _ Good thing I made it to shore before I remembered I can’t move,  _ Sokka thought, and collapsed face first onto the ice.

* * *

He woke up in the igloo, stripped and covered in blankets. There was a fire nearby, and Katara was sitting next to it.

‘Hey,’ Sokka said, propping himself up slightly. ‘Is dad okay?’

‘He’s fine. Better than you. I dried him off and Bato gave him soup and he was on his feet in an hour. You’ve been out since yesterday, though.’

‘A whole day? Weren’t we supposed to leave yesterday?’

‘Yeah. It’s just you, me, dad, and Bato. Everyone else is gone.’

Sokka sighed and lay back, blanket still covering him. ‘At least we got the seal-shark.’

‘I’m glad you have your priorities straight.’

‘Where are my clothes?’

She threw a pile at him. ‘Your stylish artisan cloak got used as a bag for seal-shark meat.’

He humphed. ‘Privacy, please.’

‘You're welcome for saving your life.’ she said as she left the igloo.

He put his shirt and pants on, tied his belt around his waist, and slung his boomerang sheath over his back. Tied his hair back and put on socks and boots. He felt alright.

Except for the cold, of course. He had kind of thought he would have gotten over it after having been almost frozen to death, but apparently not.

‘Where’s boomerang?’ he called.

‘How should I know?’ Katara asked from outside the igloo.

‘Where'd you put it?’

‘You didn’t have it.’ Katara said.

‘I had it when I went out!’ Sokka said, and realized, at the same moment Katara said, ‘Wait, did you lose it when you fell in the water?’

Sokka sank to his knees. ‘ _ Boomerang _ ,’ he moaned. ‘We have to find it!’

‘How?’

‘Waterbend or something, I don’t know! You're the one with the magic water!!'’

‘That water’s hundreds of feet deep in places, Sokka.’

‘You don’t understand! Boomerang is my best friend! I can’t just abandon him!’

‘The seal-sharks are gathering in packs now, Sokka,’ Bato said from outside the igloo. ‘We caught the tail-end of their solitary season. Now they’ve started mating and they’ll be twice as aggressive. We can’t go any further into their mating grounds.’

‘I feel like you’re just making that up.’ Sokka said.

‘Sokka,’ Hakoda’s voice joined in. ‘We’ll make another boomerang, alright? But Bato’s right. We should leave as soon as possible.’

And so they did.

They were nice about it, but not nice  _ enough _ . They didn’t get it, Sokka muttered to himself. They didn’t understand the crushing loss he had suffered.

It was still  _ really cold  _ on the way back, and the others didn’t make it any better, by acting like they didn’t feel it. There was no way they couldn’t feel how ridiculously cold it was.

Yue and La, he was cold.

* * *

_ When I was a little boy, my father said to me _

_ My son, if you’d live to grow a beard, attend my warnings three _

_ Never come in when your shoes are wet _

_ Never kiss someone you’ve only just met _

_ And never go out to sea _

\- from the song ‘Ocean Inua’

* * *

Geigo Lin tried to be a kind man. He tried to be friendly, whatever the circumstances. It was a motto of his, to always attempt to look at the Agni-touched side of the wall; he tried to find the brighter side of anything and stick to it. It wasn’t always easy, but over time it  _ had _ gotten easier. He felt better about himself; he had spent three years in the army and had done some bad things, and ever since the war ended he had tried to be  _ better _ .

Iroh was a good man, and he would not have had anyone else be ruler of the Fire Nation. And Iroh, Lin could tell, was someone who put on a front of peace and kindness.

Not to say that Iroh wasn’t kind or peaceful. But Lin knew from experience how stubborn Fire Nation officials could be, and knew that Iroh couldn’t have been having as easy a time of it as his national addresses made it seem. And he admired the man for that.

But some people made it really damn hard to be nice to them. And he could never tell whether they were just  _ not nice  _ people, or whether he was coming on as obnoxious. There was a fine line, and he tried to walk it, but every now and then he realized he was being invasive. For example, the time he went to Capital City to buy a dress for his daughter.

The folks in the carriage were an interesting group of people. Three barely-adults, a fellow in a hooded cloak who immediately crammed himself into a corner of the carriage, and a man who Lin decided had to be a gecko-pig farmer from the way he dressed. Only farmers wore those boots; Lin had a few neighbors who had the exact same kind.

‘So where are you folks from?’ he asked the trio of younger folks.

‘Ba Sing Se,’ the boy almost growled.

‘Wow ’ Lin said involuntarily. He was taken aback by the obvious hostility in the man’s voice. It wasn’t every day you met someone from Ba Sing Se, though, and he wasn’t going to let a little wariness on this stranger’s part deprive him of a conversation. ‘Never been. I heard it’s nice?’

The young man ignored him. ‘I’ve got a cousin-in-law whose mother lives out there,’ he said, describing old ma’am Faolin’s Dumplings.

One of the girls – the one wearing pink instead of red – leaned towards him. ‘I think I've been there!’ she said. ‘They have little cookies in the shape of frog-bears!’

‘That sure sounds like Pho,’ Lin said. Even if the other two weren’t in the mood for talking, at least the pink one seemed nice and cheerful. She seemed like she had the attitude Lin only wished he had.

He turned to the hooded fellow squeezed into the corner. ‘What about you?’ he asked, trying to include him. ‘Are you from around here?’

‘No.’

Lin knew that tone. He had heard it plenty of times during the war. It was the sound of someone barely alive; someone almost dead on the inside. In the soul. Whoever this man was, he had seen just as much as Lin had himself.

And Lin had been places.

During the war, every now and then, a soldier would come back from a battle and just give up. They’d do their tasks and follow orders, but when they had downtime they would just… exist. Lie in their tents, mostly, staring at nothing. You'd ask them a question and they wouldn’t answer; you'd offer them something and they’d say ‘no’ without hearing you. They didn’t care anymore. Lin had had a friend named Taozin, who had come back from the siege of Ba Sing Se. Taozin’s linemate had been killed in a battle, crushed by earthbenders. After that, Taozin hardly spoke. He didn’t  _ live  _ anymore. He just waited to die. The last time Lin had seen him – as Lin was being shipped out to the North at the time – he had asked Taozin if there was anything he could do. Taozin had said ‘no’, and had gone on staring at the roof of the tent.

This hooded man’s ‘no’ sounded exactly the same.

‘Where  _ are  _ you from?’ he tried. All you could do, when they got like that, was try and draw them out.

He wasn’t sure he  _ wanted  _ to draw out this man’s story. But he’d try anyway.

Because he tried to be a kind man.

‘Somewhere else.’

Lin laughed, a fake, over-exaggerated, forced laugh. He had gotten good at them, over the years. He had figured out just how to laugh in order to make himself seem less threatening, more inviting.

But the cloak didn’t take the bait, so eventually Lin turned to the farmer, who was  _ much  _ more willing to talk. They spent the whole journey in a lively discussion that ranged across pretty much every topic of conversation Lin could think of.

By the time they got to Capital City, they were onto different treads of boots. The carriage stopped with a jolt, and the boy – who had fallen asleep a degree into the trip – started awake.

‘Did I miss anything?’ he asked.

The red girl raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, we  _ learned _ a lot. About Lin, and what he likes to do, and eat, and where he likes to go, and who his friends are, and what  _ their  _ interests are. It was a spectacularly interesting radian.’

Lin knew it was sarcasm and that it was directed at him, but he smiled anyway. These kids were funny, the way they interacted with each other. Sure, two out of three looked like they wanted to kill him, and they probably could have, but they seemed like fun anyway.

The pink girl hopped out of the carriage first. ‘Thanks for the ride!’ she said to the driver. There it was again: that was what Lin wished he could be like. Kind to people, and friendly, and  _ nice _ . He let the other two follow their friend, then gestured to the farmer (whose name, he had learned, was Wit Luzen). Wit made his way out with some groaning and stretching.

Lin slid to the open door. As he stepped out, he looked back at the cloak, who hadn’t moved from his corner.

‘Friend,’ Lin said, his joviality from earlier replaced by seriousness, hoping to get through to this man. ‘I don’t mean to pry. But I have been about, and I know someone whose sword doesn't sit easy when I see one. Is there anything you need?’

‘No,’ the cloak said.

Lin sighed, nodded, and left the carriage.

He bought the dress for his daughter Mingmei and enjoyed the city while he waited for the next postilliate back home. He bought a packet of lizard-chicken wings and ate them while watching street performers juggle pots and pans. He walked down Artist’s Lane, admiring the paintings set out to dry and be admired. And he put some coins in a beggar’s cup just by the gate.

Because even though Geigo Lin was not a kind man, he tried his best to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a short chapter. Thus the title of 'interlude'. But hey, the prologue's over and we can progress into the story now! Instead of, you know, having each chapter cover the same time period. Which was fun to do but not all that satisfying in the long run. 
> 
> Much and many thanks to [StuckatHome77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StuckatHome77/pseuds/StuckatHome77) for beta-ing! If anything went right in this chapter, it's because of them. 
> 
> Come back on the 24th to find out what happened to the Fire Hazard siblings! Or, as have been suggested: The Life Changing Field-Trip, The Children, Team Zuko, or... the zuccs...  
> Not the last one. But anyway, comment and kudos and subscribe! Thank you all for your awesome comments so far! Survive!


	6. Zuko II (The Forest)

_ EXTRA! Earthbending Political Extremists terrorize Fire Nation Visitors to the Southern Earth Cities! Two killed in a Rockslide in Guan Ha! Magistrate Vo: “Our Police Force is doing all we can.” Could this be the Beginning of an Uprising? EXTRA! _

\- Headline from the Ba Sing Se Harbinger

* * *

‘Now,’ Zuko said, and leaped forward out of the crowd and into the square. Ty Lee and Mai were right behind him.

The response was immediate and varied. The crowd gasped as one; the guards shouted and began to move toward them; Iroh stumbled back, expression unreadable; and the earthbender, the friend of the Avatar’s, bent a semicircle of earth around Azula, separating her from the guards.

One of those was not like the others.

_ What in Agni’s burning name _ … Zuko thought, but he was running and trying not to get killed, so his capacity for actual rational thought was limited.  _ She’s helping us? The Avatar’s earthbender? _ She had to have made a mistake, surely.

Whatever it was that had happened, it had bought them a few more moments of time. Azula was standing motionless in the middle of the half-circle of earth, and the guards on the other side were rushing around to cut Zuko off.

They had planned this attack since the news of Azula’s trial had been proclaimed. Ty Lee and Mai would hold off the Avatar and his friends while Zuko grabbed Azula away from whoever was keeping her.

In the plans, they had always imagined Azula would be struggling. Instead, she was just… standing there.

‘Come on!’ he called over the sounds of the screaming crowd and shouting guards. ‘Azula!’ But she stared at him with as blank an expression as she had received her sentence. By the time he had gotten within grabbing-and-dragging-along distance, the guards had made their way around the earth walls and had readied themselves for bending.

‘A little help, please?’ Zuko snapped. Azula raised her own arms, almost languidly.

‘Wait, don’t kill—!’ Zuko started to say, but she had already lashed out with the lightning.

To Zuko’s surprise, the guards redirected it, with varying levels of success. None of them looked like they were seriously injured. ‘Where did they learn to do that?’ he asked.

‘The Fire Lord taught them how,’ Azula said. ‘He invented the technique. It’s  _ annoying _ .’

‘I know,’ Zuko said, throwing a pair of flame punches at the closest soldier. ‘He taught me, too.’

Azula laughed.

‘What? It’s true.’

She ignored that, and they focused on fighting. Zuko immediately realized that they couldn’t afford to stand and fight; there were too many, and more were coming.

‘We’ll have to…’ he began, but before he could finish his thought, a series of stone pillars erupted from the ground with perfect precision, throwing every guard thirty feet into the air.

‘I don’t get it,’ he said, and grabbed Azula’s shoulder. ‘Come on. Can you run?’

‘How dare you  _ touch  _ me… No, of course I can’t run, I'm chained…’

Huffing, he pulled his hand back. ‘Fine, then start shuffling. Go to the edge of the square.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we’ll try to lose them in alleys and side streets.’

She cooperated – surprisingly – and made her slow way away from the fighting and toward the buildings on the far side of the square. Zuko took a look over at Mai and Ty Lee.

The Avatar was lying motionless on the ground –  _ damn, Ty Lee, you definitely deserve that war balloon  _ – and Ty Lee was dancing around the waterbender, who was frustratedly throwing water whip after water whip at her. Mai and the Water Tribe boy were knife-fighting – she was winning, Zuko could tell, the Water Tribe boy was off balance and he wasn’t used to the knife, –  _ why was he using it, didn't he have a club or a boomerang or something  _ – and the earthbender was, apparently, on  _ their  _ side. She was bending against the Fire Nation soldiers with a furious determination that both impressed and frightened Zuko.

So much for Earth Kingdom loyalty.

And Iroh was gone. Iroh had been watching him all through the routine and proclamations, but sometime between then and now the old man had disappeared. Zuko wasn’t surprised – it wasn’t always a good idea for Fire Lords to involve himself in riots – but at the same time he was a bit disappointed.

He would have liked to try to beat Iroh himself. Maybe not kill him – Zuko’s mental jury was still out on that count – but certainly  _ hurt  _ him. Make up for five years of running, and for what had been done to Azula, and for the wrongness just beneath the surface of Fire Nation politics, and  _ everything  _ that Iroh had done wrong. Zuko wasn’t even sure it was all Iroh’s fault. But he wanted someone to blame for everything. And Iroh had done  _ enough _ .

And Azula was acting weird. Weird _ er _ . So there was that. Zuko wasn’t exactly looking forward to the idea of a field trip with Azula if she was going to be in a ‘how dare you touch me’ mood the entire time, but that could be sorted out later.

He threw an obligatory wave of fire at the nearest cluster of soldiers, and started backing away, following Azula, covering her escape. She was moving slowly, since the chain connecting her ankles was only about a foot long. He regretted, not for the first time, not having his double dao.

Then two things happened almost at the same time. The earthbender threw out her hand, and a pair of stone spears neatly sliced Azula’s chain in half; and half a moment after, a column of earth burst from the ground and smashed into the girl’s back, throwing her across the square. She landed limp and motionless.

_ Where did that come from? Is she dead _ ? Zuko frantically scanned the square, but he couldn’t tell what had just happened. There were still too many civilians, running in panic, getting in the way, and he couldn’t make out anyone who particularly looked like they were earthbending.

As soon as the chain had broken, Azula had burst into a sprint, the chains whipping around her ankles. Zuko winced, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Finally she vanished into the alleys leading away from the square. Zuko knew that the backstreets of Capital City provided as much cover as anyone could need. Azula was safe – for now – but there was apparently an earthbender who was out for their blood.

Ty Lee and Mai broke away from their respective opponents and sprinted towards him, Ty Lee throwing in  _ completely unnecessary  _ flips as she ran.

‘Where is she?’ Mai called. Zuko pointed, and started running too.

The next few moments felt like a training exercise. Stone beams shot from the ground and ice and water stabbed through the air. Zuko ducked and dodged (and got himself two bruises, one on the side and one on the shoulder blade that  _ stung _ ) and could only hope this wasn’t how he died.

He, Mai, and Ty Lee made it out of the square more or less in one piece, far ahead of any of the Fire Nation soldiers. As it turned out, turning the square into a death trap maze didn’t do either side any favors, and so most of the soldiers tried to go around the long way.

Once they were out of sight, Zuko slowed. ‘Azula?’

And for a second hot panic flashed across his scalp – she had gone, hadn’t she, she’d run off and he'd never find her again and he’d just let loose the greatest threat to the civilized world – but just as all this went through his head, she stepped out from a shadow and swept the three of them with a still-royal glare.

‘Azula!’ Ty Lee said, and threw herself onto her. Azula stiffened.

‘Alright,’ Zuko said. ‘We have to go quickly. They’re already sending out soldiers to search for us. Our best chance is to leave the city right now, and then make our way to Freedom Port.’

‘Come on, then.’ Mai said.

They left the city too easily. Zuko didn’t like it, how easily they slipped out. The city was murmuring the rumors of what had happened, but there were hardly any guards searching.

‘They're up to something,’ he said, as they walked through the wide-open archways where the gates had used to stand. ‘I don’t like this.’

‘There should be more guards.’ Mai muttered in agreement.

‘There should be  _ any  _ guards.’

But they got away from the city and onto the main road leading away without meeting anyone who gave them anything more than a first glance.

The road – usually just called The Road, although its real name was the Road of Twelve Jades – was a wide, stone highway that had been built only a few months after the war ended. It was a marvel of engineering and bending, stretching from Capital City all the way to Gao at the far end of the Gaogin mountain range. Four wagons could travel abreast along the entire road.

‘We’ll follow the Road to Alabaster, and then head straight to Freedom Port from there,’ Zuko told Azula. ‘From Freedom we’ll find a ship back to the Earth Kingdom.’

‘Pardon  _ me _ ,’ Azula snapped. ‘Before I agree to all of this, I will need some sort of explanation.’

‘What?’ Zuko asked.

‘Why are you doing this?’

Zuko sighed. ‘Look, I know we’ve fought in the past, and I know I’ve… hurt you. But I couldn’t just leave you there. It’s not right, what they were going to do…’

‘We’ve fought in the past and you’ve  _ hurt  _ me?’ Azula asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘As if. Who  _ are  _ you, exactly?’

* * *

Weaving was an art that dated back centuries, before the Fire Nation had even been unified. Some legends even claimed that weaving was originally a form of bending, using the rhythm and flow of the warp and woof and the motion of the shuttle through the loom, to channel and control the fire. Whether or not this was true, it was a fact that weaving – especially tapestry weaving – was a deep-set facet of Fire Nation culture and history. Almost all of the museums of the Fire Nation displayed countless traditional cloths from different dynasties, telling histories both national and personal.

The Earth Kingdom had fucked that up, along with pretty much everything else about the Fire Nation tradition. Policing  _ culture _ . That was part of the price Iroh had paid for peace between the nations. The 'dirt people' got to ‘integrate the two cultures for a pleasing synthesis of arts, so that each tradition might better understand and appreciate the other, and that the nations might achieve a perfectly harmonious, and politically sensitive, balance’. 

Which meant the Earth Kingdom pottery business soared, and the Fire Nation weaving economy fell off a cliff.

They found a little Road-side town called Wonju and stopped there for the night, Azula already complaining about the lack of food. They couldn’t afford room, let alone board, so they broke into a barn and slept on the empty sackcloth.

Zuko couldn’t sleep. The barn felt stuffy and his clothes stuck to his skin. The winter had been hardly a winter at all, and the spring already felt like summer. He tossed and turned, trying to cool down, but nothing worked. Finally he crept to the barn door.

‘I’ll take the watch,’ he told Ty Lee. ‘I can’t sleep.’

She was yawning and rubbing her eyes, so her feeble protests weren’t too convincing. ‘Okay, then.’ she said, before collapsing in a heap and falling asleep.

Even the night breeze just outside the barn felt warm and dry. Zuko wondered if he was sick. It would be a cruel trick of the spirits for him to successfully rescue his sister only to die of a fever.

Azula. Damn everything that had ever happened to put them in this position. She had no more idea than anyone what was wrong with her, and not the slightest memory of the three of them. In fact, whenever they tried to explain, she would scream that it hurt and clutch at her head.

She had forgotten him.

He didn’t know whether it was good or bad. And he didn’t know why, after  _ everything  _ they had done to each other and all the pain they had caused, it somehow  _ hurt, _ just a little, that she didn’t know who he was.

_ It doesn’t matter _ , he told himself.  _ If she remembers me or not. I don’t care. Azula always lies. We’re all better off without her memories _ .

Out of nowhere he remembered, vividly, one morning in the palace, when they had woken up very early and snuck into the kitchen and made frybread from the leftover batter.

_ He had shown her how to make frybread in the shape of the first character of her name, and she had accidentally burned the butter with her own fire… _

He stared into the darkness, trying to meditate. He strained his eyes, the outlines of trees and buildings making a faint silhouette against the barely-brighter night sky, and every star seemed to wane and grow, wane and grow, as he breathed in and out.

Degrees passed, and he lost count. Eventually he heard someone move behind him, and a moment later Mai laid a hand on his arm.

‘I thought Ty Lee was watching,’ she whispered.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ 

‘What's wrong now?’

He kept his eyes fixed on the blurry horizon. ‘It’s too hot,’ he said.

She laughed softly. ‘It’s  _ freezing _ out here.’

‘I'm too hot.’

‘Okay. Warm me up.’

She sat down and leaned into him, and he put his arm around her automatically.

_ When Lu-Ten came back he gave them each an earthbender arrow, and they played Water Tribesmen in the garden… _

‘Azula,’ he said, and then couldn’t think of anything else.  _ Azula _ . That was all he could put into words.

‘What about her?’

He shrugged. What question was there to ask? Azula. What about her? ‘I don’t know.’

‘She’ll be fine eventually. Once she’s been away from the freezers for a while.’

‘Hopefully.’

‘She  _ will _ .’

‘Or?’

‘What do you mean, or?’ she said, vaguely irritated.

‘What if she’s not? What if she never remembers?’

She pulled back and looked at him. ‘Zuko, if she never remembers who we are, she’ll have less reason to hate us.’

‘She’s my  _ sister _ .’

‘She’s tried to kill you. More than once.’

‘She was your friend. How do you not feel anything?’

‘I feel more than you think. I wish she was back to normal. I'm just saying it’s not the worst thing in the world if she never gets her memories back.’

‘Fine.’ Zuko snapped, still staring into the dark.

_ Remember when I fell out of a tree and scraped my hand and she brought me a bandage before the servants so much as noticed? _

‘I have the next watch,’ she said.

‘Go back to sleep. I’ll take it.’

She stood, brushed herself off, and went back into the barn. He could tell he hadn’t made her happy. But there wasn’t much he was willing to do.

So he sat there, meditating, until the sun rose, and the inner fire steamed the sweat away from his forehead.

* * *

When they had first told Azula who they were, she hadn’t believed them. She had laughed, at first, and then grown angry when they kept at it.

‘I don’t have a brother,’ she snapped.

And then they hadn't believed  _ her _ .

A weird back and forth had started, with Zuko insisting and Azula disdainfully refusing to believe him. Finally a semblance of an explanation was reached when Zuko mentioned Ozai, and Azula shouted that it  _ hurt her head _ . But after that, she… kind of believed them. She accepted that she didn’t understand why she couldn’t remember ever having a father.

Something had happened to her memory, obviously. Zuko could hardly blame her, considering what she had gone through and what the earthbender had done to her at the Agni Kai. She had been pretty badly injured, and he had no idea how they had treated her injuries.

And this was what had happened.

Iroh and the Earth Kingdom had to have known, hadn't they? That the girl they had imprisoned for five years had hardly any comprehension of what had happened?

That they would still take away her fire – her  _ soul _ – bothered Zuko more than whatever economic troubles the Earth Kingdom had foisted upon his nation.

* * *

Wonju in the light was not much less dull than Wonju at dusk. A street vendor half-heartedly invited Mai to purchase a ‘necklace for your lovely arm – shit, I mean, a bracelet for your pretty neck’, but the town was more or less silent, even during the day.

Most of the shops were empty. They had been, Zuko noticed from the signs, members of the Weaver’s Union.

‘What happened to the weavers?’ Ty Lee asked one of them men who seemed to have nothing better to do than to lie under awnings and chew bits of straw.

‘Fuckin’ rockies pushed ‘em off, eh,’ the man grumbled. ‘‘At’s me da’s old shop. But the rockies made t’ Union raise fees, and da didn’t have ‘at kind of ban in pocket.’

‘So all the weavers are out of business?’ Ty Lee said. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘Most of. It’s all pots now, eh. Fuckin’ rockies wi’ their pots and all.’

‘Endeavor to persevere.’ Zuko muttered. They moved on. ‘Uncle’s done a  _ wonderful  _ job, hasn’t he.’

‘It can’t be all his fault,’ Ty Lee said. ‘I've heard that the Dai Li are-’

Azula shrieked.

‘What?’ Zuko shouted, as she sank to her knees and pressed her fists to her temples. ‘Azula, what…’

She stopped as suddenly as she had started, and blinked up at the three of them looking down at her. ‘I'm fine,’ she snapped. ‘Stop staring.’

Heads had turned, though, and there were a worrying number of eyes on them for a town that had seemed almost empty. Zuko guessed that in a dying village, there wasn’t much else to do than watch newcomers.

‘Let’s go,’ he muttered. ‘We’re drawing attention.’

They made their way to the Road. It was still early in the morning, and the dew was only beginning to evaporate off of the grasses. Zuko knew that the spring mists should have been cool, but he felt nothing except the uncomfortable, almost cloying heat that no one else could feel.

‘Are you…’ he started to ask Ty Lee, but Azula pointed at the sky. ‘Look!’ she hissed.

They looked. In the sky, barely larger than the tip of Zuko’s thumb, was the unmistakable form of the Avatar’s bison.

‘They're coming for us,’ Zuko said.

‘Obviously,’ Azula answered, curling a lip. ‘If you really are my brother, it’s obvious where all the brains went…’

‘We have to move,’ Mai cut in. ‘Now. Find cover.’

They went. It felt strange, avoiding the bison rather than following it. It had been over five years, but the time spent chasing the Avatar was a time that Zuko wasn’t quite sure he would ever be able to forget. It had been constant and unyielding effort and stress, all day, every day, the Avatar eluding him, always just out of reach. It had been irritating and exhilarating, those months, and now as he ran he wondered whether this was what it had been like for them. The running. Being hunted.

It was less exciting and more terrifying on this side of the chase.

* * *

They found cover in a woods that clustered between a pair of mountains in the Gaogin range, about a mile from Wonju. The Fire Nation wasn’t exactly known for its vibrant foliage or varied terrain; flatlands or scatterings of mountains were pretty much all you ever found. Since the war had ended and wood was less of a necessary military commodity, Iroh had been trying to replant the forests that had thrived in the days before the war. These woods were too thick to be one of those new ones, however. It felt more natural. Older.

‘This isn’t good,’ Zuko said. ‘If we have to stay undercover all day…’

‘We’ll sleep during the day and travel at night,’ Mai said. ‘I don’t see what's so hard.’

For Mai and Ty Lee, maybe not that much. But Zuko was a  _ firebender _ , and to sleep while Agni’s blessing was at its height was… a disturbing thought. His bending would be weaker, but it was more than that. It would be the feeling, the lethargy and stiffness and discomfort that nonbenders couldn’t understand. There was a reason the Fire Nation never performed nighttime sneak attacks.

‘Alright ’ he said.

Azula was frowning, but she didn’t say anything. She was watching the flying bison. It was still a long way off, but it was coming straight towards them.

‘There's no way they can have seen us, is there?’ Ty Lee asked.

‘There's always a way for something to go wrong.’ Zuko muttered. ‘We’d better move. We can go through the trees, get to the other side of the forest before night, try to travel along the mountain range instead of the Road.’

‘You chased them for months,’ Mai said. ‘How do they act?’

‘When they're being hunted, they're chaotic. When they hunt, they're single-minded… The only way we’re going to get away from them is if they never see us in the first place. We have to go.’

They went.

The forest was strangely calm. Zuko had never been one to be in touch with nature, but it was peaceful beneath the trees. Through the leaves, the Gaogins rose stark and gray on one side, a natural wall of stone that had once been used by a warlord to win a war. He slipped into almost a meditative state while they walked, thinking about nothing but putting each foot in front of the other.

They moved single file to make as few tracks as possible. Zuko led. So there was nothing to warn him when the tree in front of him came to life and smacked him across the face.

The branch knocked him to the ground. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the other three make various noises of alarm and then three sharp cracks that sounded even more painful. Then vines wrapped around his feet, branches pinned his arms to his sides, and he couldn’t move.

He was moved around violently – he couldn’t see much more than vague flashes of movement as the trees threw him back and forth – and when they finally came to a rest he was at the edge of a small clearing of trees, looking in at the sunlit grass.

‘What just happened?’ he spat, past a leaf brushing his mouth. He realized after a moment that it was pretty obvious what had happened. The trees had come alive. What he wanted to know was what was going to happen to them because of it.

‘We’ve been attacked by trees.’ Azula drawled, as expected.

‘Can anyone get an arm free?’ Zuko grunted. The tree’s grip on him was as unyielding as… well, wood.

‘I’ll burn it away-’ Azula said.

‘Stop!’ Zuko said. ‘That’s a  _ terrible  _ idea… Come on, just try and get an arm free.’

‘These trees have chi!’ Ty Lee said, surprised. ‘Most of them. It’s so  _ vibrant _ …’

‘ _ Excuse  _ me,’ Azula snapped. ‘Why exactly can’t I burn these trees to the ground?’

‘Because we’re  _ in  _ these trees,’ Zuko said. The branch binding his legs twitched, squeezing just a bit tighter and then letting go. ‘And I’m pretty sure that if you try, they’ll squish us like grapes before you get so much as a spark going.’

‘They haven’t killed us yet.’ Mai pointed out.

‘Maybe they want us to do something?’ Ty Lee suggested hopefully. ‘Maybe they have a spirit quest for us!’

‘Maybe they're waiting to eat us and they want us fresh when they do.’ Zuko grumbled.

They waited. There wasn’t much else they could do. About five degrees of  _ nothing at all  _ passed uneventfully. Zuko’s neck itched – it was pressed against a bit of bark – and he couldn’t even turn his head enough to scratch it.

‘I don’t want to die like this,’ Azula said finally. ‘I would rather burn than starve.’

Almost as if in response to her words, the trees around them began to sway in unison. Softly at first, barely more than a creaking of the trunks. But gradually they began to rock back and forth, swaying like they were being swept by a strong wind. Leaves fell and the dirt around them shook as the roots shifted.

‘ _ What _ —’ Zuko started to say, but decided there wasn’t much he could say. The trees went on swaying, back and forth, back and forth, all together.

Ty Lee said it for him. ‘What’s happening?’ she wailed, and Azula’s sarcastic response was lost in the groaning of the wood as the trees rocked. Then they all stopped at once, and the air was still for a moment.

‘This is not—’ Azula started, and then the flying bison floated down and settled in the clearing.

‘ _ Fuck. _ ’ Zuko said, and meant it wholeheartedly.

Five faces peered over the side of the basket-saddle at him. The Avatar, the two Water Tribe siblings, the earthbender, and someone whose armor marked her as a Kyoshi warrior.

‘Prince Zuko!’ the nonbender – Suka? Soka? – called down. ‘Looks like you need some help… Wait, no.  _ Wood  _ you like some help?’

The earthbender punched him, hard, in the arm.

_ Why was she here? She had betrayed them – she had let Azula go – she had attacked the Avatar! What's going on? Why wasn’t she  _ dead _? _

‘Avatar Aang,’ Zuko said. ‘What will you do to us?’

The bald monk stared down at him with all the placid wisdom of hundreds of Avatars. But when he spoke, his voice was uncertain. ‘I'm… not sure.’ he said.

* * *

_ In Capital City, there is a prison. After the war ended, there were only two prisoners inside. _

_ One of them is the ex-Fire Lord, Ozai, son of Azulon. _

_ Lady Lin stops in front of the other one. ‘Hello in there,’ she says. Her gray-painted nails tap on the iron bars. ‘Are you alive?’ _

_ There is no answer, but the prisoner shifts, and slides himself closer to the light. He is crouched, hunched over like a boar-ape from the southern islands. Lady Lin’s face tightens with distaste. ‘Don’t they let you wash, in here?’ she asks, waving her hand in front of her face. ‘Anyway. I have a task for you. You remember those, don’t you? Princess Azula was kidnapped by her brother and two others today. They went down the Road. Go rescue her and bring her back here.’ _

_ The prisoner sighs in agreement. Lady Lin can’t remember if they cut his tongue out. ‘Can you speak?’ He doesn’t answer. She rolls her eyes and unlocks the door to his cell. As he shuffles out, she gestures to the wall of the prison hallway. ‘There you go. Your swords. Now go, go, go! Save the princess!’ _

_ He takes the sheath and slings it over his shoulder. _

_ ‘If I have to tell you to get going again, you’ll be a finger less when you make it to her,’ Lin tells him. He turns and leaves. When he rounds the corner away from her, she can hear him break into a run, his feet pounding on the rough stone. _

_ If he keeps running like that, on an empty stomach, he’ll pass out before he makes it out of the city, Lin muses. _

_ Iroh had told her not to interfere, and that he had sent a bounty hunter named Kosta. Lin didn’t trust the sound of that name. Water Tribe. Iroh had said the man was an earthbender; even worse. An earthbender with a Water Tribe name. _

_ What was the nation coming to? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sausage has now begun to roll!   
> Haha. That's the joke I was trying to make last time. I got it now. Thank you. 
> 
> A completely unrelated aside: I just finished 'Death Note' and am a bit lost as to what I'm supposed to do with my life now. Can anyone recommend a good follow-up anime? 
> 
> Comment and kudos and subscribe! Survive!


	7. Suki I (The Kodama)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halloween really came out of nowhere, huh? I thought Valentine's Day was last week. I'm going to be a fucking _adult_ in like a month. What the heck. 
> 
> I'm posting this at two in the morning instead of writing a college app essay which needs to be finished by the first. I need an intervention. Anyway, this is my way of coping.

_ My brother, conflict never was my goal, _

_ And though you think me traitor, here I stand, _

_ With open arms and empty hands, prepared _

_ To face what punishment you think befits. _

_ I took from no one what was not my own _

_ And harmed no man that never threatened me. _

_ If death is lawful for such crimes as mine, _

_ Then I will tie the rope about my neck. _

\- Li Xiu’s speech from the play ‘The Tiger of General Feng’

* * *

Suki had never been inside the Fire Lord’s private office before. It was nothing like she had expected: just a simple desk, some chairs, some bookshelves, and a single modest Fire Nation banner hanging almost discreetly behind Iroh’s chair.

The rest of the gang was there already. Avatar Aang – to whom she directed a quick and respectful bow – Katara, and Sokka. And Toph, who was sitting in the corner of the room for some reason.

‘Suki!’ Sokka said, his face lighting up. He jumped to his feet.

‘Sit down, Sokka.’ Katara said, pulling him back down. ‘Hi, Suki.’

‘Hi, everyone,’ she said, taking a seat next to Sokka. ‘Fire Lord Iroh?’

‘I thought it would be a pleasant surprise not to tell them you were coming,’ the Fire Lord said. He looked as unhappy as Suki had ever seen him. ‘I had planned a lunch, actually. It would have been nice. Well, as it is, you will have to take the lunch to go.’

‘What's going on?’ Suki asked.

‘You haven’t heard?’ When she shook her head, Iroh rubbed his forehead as if he was trying to iron out the worry lines. ‘My niece has escaped.’

_ Oh _ . That was… not good. Not good was an understatement. That was  _ very bad _ . Suki hadn't seen Azula since Sozen’s Comet, but she still remembered the absolutely unhinged look on the princess’ face as she blasted her own brother with lightning.

‘How did she get away?’

‘My nephew, Zuko, had something to do with it. As well as…’ Iroh frowned at Toph. ‘Miss Beifong.’

‘What?’ Suki spun to look at Toph, who made absolutely no sign that she was aware of the conversation. ‘Toph?’

‘She… took action against Avatar Aang, and helped Azula and Zuko get away.’

Suki blinked. She was totally lost. ‘Um… why?’

‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ Katara snapped. Sokka mumbled something under his breath that Suki didn’t quite catch; whatever it was, Katara growled and elbowed him in the side.

‘Toph?’ Suki asked. ‘What… what happened?’ Why wasn’t she… in prison?

‘Aang wasn’t planting his feet,’ Toph said, her head between her knees. Her voice was muffled. ‘So I hit him with a boulder.’

‘Why did you help Azula escape?’

Toph didn’t say anything, and after a moment Iroh cleared his throat. ‘Whatever Miss Beifong’s reasons  _ were _ , it is now a matter of fact that she is in a great deal of trouble. The Earth Kingdom representatives present have informed me that they intend to take her into custody—’

‘Just let ‘em  _ try _ ,’ Toph grumbled.

‘—but Avatar Aang has made it clear that he is not going to let that happen.’

‘Why not?’ Suki asked.

Aang shifted uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘It doesn’t seem right. She’s my friend…’

‘She betrayed us,’ Katara interrupted. ‘She attacked you and let Azula get away.’

‘I know. But she’s still our friend. And…’

‘She sure wasn’t acting like it when she hit you with a rock.’

Aang pushed himself into the air and landed in a crouch on his chair. ‘Do  _ you  _ want to let the Earth Kingdom take her?’ he asked.

Katara was silent for a moment. ‘No,’ she said, finally. ‘I guess not.’

Aang floated back down to his seat.

‘There are not many people I can trust, whose loyalties lie neither with the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation.’ Iroh said to Suki. ‘But you are one of them. Perhaps it was fate that brought you here just when we needed you. We have no time to wait for more help. I cannot allow my niece and nephew to escape. If you will go, I intend to send you with the Avatar to recapture Azula.’

‘What about Toph?’ Suki asked.

Iroh closed his eyes. ‘She will… accompany you.’

‘ _ What _ ?’ Suki asked again.

‘She has given us her word that she will not help Azula escape.’ Iroh let out a sigh. ‘I must confess, Miss Beifong, you are a very confusing young woman.’ He tried a chuckle, but it sounded flat and empty. ‘When Azula is returned to this city, we will… cut off her hands. As the Earth Kingdom originally suggested.’

‘Why will the Avatar not take her bending, as planned?’ Suki asked.

‘Because I asked him nicely.’ Toph said.

‘You're okay with cutting her  _ hands  _ off?’ Suki asked Aang. He was supposed to be a pacifist, wasn’t he? He was vegetarian, for stones’ sake.

‘It’s different than taking her bending.’ Aang muttered.

It was all very weird and Suki didn’t understand why any of this was happening. But she’d rather be confused  _ with  _ her friends than confused back on Kyoshi, having no idea what was happening. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’

‘You have the gratitude of the Fire Nation.’ Iroh said wearily. But he sounded, if not happy, at least happi _ er _ .

‘We’re leaving as soon as possible,’ Aang told her. ‘We can’t let them get too far away. We know they're headed towards the Gaogins, but there are lots of towns along the way that they could lose us in.’

‘You knew where they were going but you didn’t stop them?’ Suki asked.

‘Well, some of us were unconscious.’ Sokka said. Katara gave Toph another glare.

‘Alright then,’ Suki said. ‘Let’s go.’

* * *

‘I lost Boomerang,’ Sokka groaned into the back of her head as they left the room. He had wrapped himself around her from behind like a sloth-bat as soon as they had all stood up, and was complaining at a constant monotone into her hair. ‘It fell into the  _ ocean _ and Katara wouldn’t bend it  _ out _ …’

‘There were creatures,’ Katara said from in front of them, waving her hand dismissively.

‘Creatures?’ Suki said, in mock horror. ‘Sokka, don’t tell me there were  _ creatures _ .’

‘Big animals with teeth and tusks and flippers,’ Sokka said. ‘One of them almost killed my dad. We barely made it out of there alive.’

‘So why are you complaining that you lost Boomerang?’

‘It’s  _ gone _ !’ he moaned.

‘We can make a new one…’

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

They walked quietly for a few moments. They were going to the stables on the entirely opposite side of the palace, where Appa and their supplies – which consisted mostly of food and lots of rope – were waiting. Suki hadn't needed to pack; everything she needed was in the bag she had brought with her from Kyoshi. They had to walk carefully, moving their legs in sync, since Sokka refused to let go of her.

‘Have you been really cold lately?’ Sokka asked softly.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been cold for a while. No one else is, though. I don’t know what's wrong with me.’

‘I haven’t been cold,’ she said. ‘But I have been… uncomfortable. I don’t know. It’s weird. Like I'm too hot and too cold at the same time… It feels better when I'm with you.' she added after a moment.

'Me too,' Sokka said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

'I think it’s just boredom, though.’

‘Probably something like that.’

‘An evil fire princess and her brother are just what we need.’

Sokka agreed, humming wordlessly, his chin resting on the top of her head.

‘It’s not fair that you grew,’ Suki added after a moment. Then: ‘Are you  _ sniffing my hair _ ?’

‘I like your perfume,’ Sokka said. ‘It smells like apples.’

‘That’s  _ weird _ , Sokka.’

‘Hmm.’

* * *

They rode on Appa and followed the Road. It was the calmest chase Suki had ever been in. ‘Shouldn’t we go faster?’ she said, a few minutes into the flight. ‘And fly closer to the ground?’

‘Why?’ Aang asked.

‘To catch up with them? So we can see them if we get close?’

‘Oh,’ Aang laughed. He was lying on his back on Appa’s head, arms crossed behind him, eyes closed. ‘No, we don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘We prefer to go at our own pace,’ Sokka told her. ‘We don’t need to look too hard. Something weird will happen, we’ll check it out, and there they’ll be.’

‘Is this how you do missions?’ Suki asked, almost in awe.

‘Yup.’

Toph was curled into a corner of the basket. She didn’t look great.

‘What's the matter with her?’ Suki whispered to Sokka.

He shook his head at her, and gestured dramatically to his ears. Toph rolled over to face them. ‘I'm fine,’ she grumbled. ‘I just don’t like being so far away from the ground… And I can still  _ hear  _ you when you whisper, you know.’

The Road beneath them followed a fairly straight path. It curved here and there to avoid the natural turning of the River Hofuna, but for the most part had been built to provide direct travel to Gao. Roads usually went between established towns; the Road was unique, in that it drew towns to itself. Since it had been built, with the help of earthbending contractors who could tear down and rebuild a house in five minutes, the nearby villages had slowly migrated towards it. Towns had sprung up along the Road, and it had become a new trend for Earth Kingdom tourists to stop in each town along the Road on their visits to Capital City.

‘We’ll stop here for the night,’ Sokka said, pointing at a map spread over his lap. ‘Wonju. ‘A center of industry for the weaving trade, Wonju, on the famous Road of Twelve Jades, boasts the Purple Swan, a restaurant run by Jiayi Wu. Wu, an Earth Kingdom native, trained in the finest culinary institutes of Ba Sing Se to perfect his…’’

‘Sokka,’ Katara interrupted him. ‘Is the Purple Swan the only reason we’re stopping in Wonju?’

‘No! We’ll make it to Wonju just as the sun sets. Right before the sun sets. Like, just an hour before the sun sets. Or, well, starts to set. We’ll get there in the evening, eat, get an early sleep, and wake up early the next day!’

And that was that, apparently. Suki wasn’t sure how this mission would go if they planned their movements based on restaurants along the way, but she was all for it as a matter of principle.

* * *

Wonju turned out to be a dump. Even from the air, Suki could tell it wasn’t the ‘center of industry for the weaving trade’.

‘Huh...’ Sokka said as they landed in the town square. ‘This place isn’t quite what the guidebook made it seem.’

The town looked dead on its feet. It was evening, but there were barely any street-lights lit. The few that  _ were  _ lit served only to throw light onto a village that had lost its spirit. It was sad, Suki thought. Back on Kyoshi they’d have lanterns hanging over the street, friends and family going out to eat from street vendors, kids throwing things at each other and running around. Nighttime was supposed to be the time for fun, when work was over. This place hadn't worked in years, but hadn't had any fun either.

They asked someone for directions to the Purple Swan. It wasn’t easy to find; tucked away behind an abandoned warehouse on the side of town that was ‘the other side’ no matter where you were standing. Its windows were shuttered and the door was closed.

‘You think it's empty?’ Aang asked.

‘There's definitely people inside,’ Toph said. ‘They're just not having a whole lot of fun.’

Sokka pushed the door open. It was pretty much as Suki had expected: a dimly lit, half-empty, gloomy bar with a man behind the counter who put more grease on the glasses he was wiping than what he took off.

‘Sit.’ he said, pointing at a table with his chin. ‘Daisuke!’

Daisuke appeared with a pad of paper but no pencil to be seen. ‘Getcha t’drink,’ he muttered. ‘'N any appetizers.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Suki saw Toph quietly take a glass of water off of the counter and pour it carefully onto the floor. After taking a second to try and understand what had just happened, she ‘ahem’-ed pointedly. Toph grinned, shark-like, and put a finger on her lips. No one else noticed.

‘Um,’ Sokka said. ‘Just making sure… this is the Purple Swan?’

‘Mm,’ Daisuke informed them, pointing at a wooden swan that was, in fact, painted purple, on the wall behind him.

‘Run by Jiayi Wu?’

‘That’s right,’ someone said from the kitchen. A moment later, the largest man Suki had ever seen stepped around the wall and into the restaurant. He was at least six and a half feet tall, with arms as thick as the practice dummies she killed on Kyoshi. He was wearing a belt with a terrifying array of knives in it, and had a plate in one hand and a cloth in the other. ‘Jiayi Wu. That’s me.’

‘Oh,’ Sokka said. Wu loomed over their table with the ease of a practiced loomer.

‘Is everything alright?’

‘Yeah,’ Sokka said. ‘Nice place you got here,’ he added, and pretended he was very interested in the menu on the far wall.

‘Doesn’t sound like you meant that.’

‘Um.’

‘It’s fine,’ Wu said, his voice registering in the soles of Suki’s feet. He rumbled wordlessly. ‘This town got ruined by the Potters’ Guild. Hey, you the Avatar?’

‘That’s me.’ Aang said.

‘Wow. It’s an honor.’

‘The Potters’ Guild?’ Katara asked. ‘What happened?’

‘Well, this town got all its money from the weaving business,’ Wu said. ‘But when the damn Earth Kingdom came in with its pottery and its cultural authority and all, they managed to kill off weaving. Then they moved on, but we couldn’t. So we’re stuck here with no business. Most of these people don’t have jobs at all.’

‘Oh,’ Katara said. ‘That’s so sad.’

Suki tuned them out. She didn’t like this, for some reason. It didn’t feel right, Wu sharing so much, so quickly, with them. They were just customers – except the Avatar, admittedly, but the Avatar would merit a handshake and maybe even an autograph, not a storytime – and Wu had come out to talk to them himself.

_ Maybe I’m just biased because he could snap me in half with one hand and I'm intimidated, _ she thought. But she still didn’t like it.

And he had talked about the Earth Kingdom like he wasn’t from it. Like he was just an ordinary Fire Nation cook. The guidebook had said he had been born in the Earth Kingdom and trained in Ba Sing Se. He talked like he was trying to  _ distract  _ them…

‘Well,’ Jiayi Wu was saying, and she brought her attention back to him. ‘It’s certainly an honor to serve the Avatar. What can I offer you folks tonight? It’s on the house.’

‘Wow,’ Aang said brightly, as if this was a surprise. Suki rolled her eyes. Sokka had told her half an hour before that the Avatar  _ never  _ paid for his own food. ‘Thanks!’

‘I’ll have the tuna-salmon sashimi bowl,’ Sokka said. ‘And a crabcake platter. And do you have jackfruit juice? Oh, and…’

Suki tuned out again for the rest of it. Her feeling of uneasiness was only growing. No one was  _ eating _ , in here. Or drinking. They were just… sitting.

Oh, man. She  _ really  _ didn’t like this.

Their food came in record time and was, honestly, not that bad. Sokka approved – Sokka always approved – and Suki had to admit that even though Jiayi Wu was shady as fuck, he did know how to cook.

As she finished her last anpan, she began to relax. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong. There couldn’t be anything wrong with someone who knew how to make anpan so well, could there?

Which was, of course, when things started to go wrong.

Two people pushed through the door, panting. ‘He’s coming! Are they gone—’ one of them half-shouted, made eye contact with Suki, and froze. ‘Shit.’

Wu, who had come by to take their empty plates, groaned. ‘Slides above and  _ below _ , Huan, you  _ idiot _ ,’ he growled, and pulled the biggest knife from his belt. At the same time, Suki leaped out of her seat, drawing her fan and flipping the table in one movement.

Toph reacted almost in the same moment, which didn’t surprise Suki too much. Toph tended to know what was going on. A ridge of earth smashed through the tiled floor right in front of Wu, who stumbled backwards, slipped on the water Toph had poured out earlier, and fell hard on his back. His head hit the tile with a painful sounding  _ crack _ .

Oh. That’s what that was for.

The two newcomers stamped down in unison, kicking head-sized chunks of earth out of the ground towards the group. Aang spun his hand and the rocks turned to sand.

‘That wasn’t  _ earthbending _ ,’ Toph grumbled. ‘That was airbending. You just airbent rock.’

‘I'm the Avatar,’ Aang reminded her. ‘I can do that.’

‘Rub it in, Twinkletoes,’ Toph said. She punched the ground and two long chunks of stone popped out of the ground, thrusting into the two earthbenders’ guts and knocking them to the floor. Katara froze them in place with a spray of ice.

‘What just happened?’ Sokka asked, a half-eaten roll clutched in one hand. ‘Is it over?’

‘No,’ Toph told him. ‘There’s at least…’

Daisuke, the waiter, charged around the counter with a nasty-looking knife. Suki threw her fan and knocked him out cold.

‘At least him,’ Toph said. ‘Probably more. I can’t feel much because a lot of this place has wooden floors. We should go.’

‘But what do they want?’ Sokka wailed. ‘Why did they attack us? The food was so good… How could such talented people be so evil?’

‘It’s a curse of ours,’ Toph said. ‘Come on…’

They made their way to the door, avoiding the holes in the floor and the three motionless men. ‘Why did you attack us?’ Toph asked one of the earthbenders. He glared silently. ‘Alright, then.’

Suki poked her head out of the door carefully. The single light above the doorway barely illuminated the opposite side of the otherwise-pitch-black street, but it didn’t seem like there was anyone lying in wait to capture and kill them.

‘I bet this is all Azula’s fault.’ Sokka muttered as they walked back to Appa. ‘I bet she hired a bunch of people to kill us so we couldn’t catch up…’

‘Who would work for her?’ Katara asked. ‘What would she pay them with?’

‘She’s a princess.’

‘She  _ was _ a princess. Now she’s a convicted criminal and has no money.’

‘Maybe they did it for free just to be able to say they fought me.’ Sokka suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.

‘Well, that’s too bad,’ Toph said. ‘Since you were busy cuddling that sweet roll instead of actually fighting them. What a waste of their time.’

Appa hadn't been disturbed. They climbed into the saddle, Aang did the yip-yip thing that Suki never understood, and they flew off. They seemed safe enough, high in the air in the middle of the night, but Suki still felt like something was going to go wrong.

Something could always go wrong when traveling with the Avatar. That was a saying from Kyoshi’s days that had stood the test of time pretty well.

That earthbender had said ‘he’s coming’, hadn't he?

Yeah, something was definitely going to happen. Something always did.

* * *

Appa eventually landed in the middle of a field and they slept on the ground. It was nice, Suki decided. Not the way ‘sleeping on the ground’ actually sounded. They had blankets and bedrolls and everything. Toph even offered to make stone tents. All they needed was a campfire and some bogsquash berries to roast.

In the morning they took off again, at Sokka’s insistence that they had lost time. They reminded him that it was his fault they had stopped in Wonju in the first place.

‘It’s not my fault we got attacked by crazy people,’ he protested. ‘We could have been injured!’

‘How exactly does that set our schedule back?’ Katara asked.

The flight was just as calm as carefree as the day before. They floated above the Road, taking a peek over the edge of the saddle every now and then to check for ‘weird stuff’, as Sokka called it. Every now and then they’d switch off who was steering Appa. Well, they called it ‘steering’. Suki didn’t see a need for it; Appa was probably the smartest out of any of them.

Nothing happened for a long while. Suki was just about ready to suggest the sacrilegious course of action of  _ actually doing something _ , when Katara, who was holding the reins, gasped and pointed.

‘What is it?’ Aang asked, pushing himself off his back with a burst of air and landing cross-legged next to her on Appa’s head. Suki and Sokka scrambled to the side of the saddle and looked out.

Katara was pointing at the woods beneath them, a forest that skirted this end of the Gaogins. The center of the forest was  _ shaking _ , a circle of trees rocking back and forth.

‘What’s that?’ Sokka asked, kind of unnecessarily.

‘What’s going on?’ Toph asked grumpily, not having moved from her spot in the saddle.

‘The trees are shaking,’ Suki told her. ‘I… They’re just shaking. I don’t know how to…’

Appa dipped down, pointed straight at the center of the rocking trees. ‘Hey!’ Suki said, startled. ‘What's going on?’

‘We’re going down.’ Aang said matter-of-factly.

‘Why?’

‘It’s a weird thing,’ Aang said. ‘And when there’s a weird thing, it usually means there’s something we should be doing about it.’

Right. They were on a mission Avatar-style. Absolutely mad, but… fun.

They broke through the crown of the forest into an open clearing. ‘Woah,’ Aang said as the trees fell away around them. ‘This is  _ cool _ .’

‘Aang,’ Sokka hissed, jabbing an elbow into Aang’s side. ‘ _ Look _ .’ He pointed. Everyone – everyone except Toph – looked.

Four red-and-black-and-gray clad figures were woven into the branches of a cluster of trees on one side of the clearing. ‘Is that…’ Suki asked.

‘Azula,’ Aang whispered. ‘And the other three.’

‘Zuko,’ Katara said, voice hard. ‘Prince Zuko.’

‘What’s  _ happening _ ,’ Toph grumbled.

‘Azula, Zuko, and the other two are wrapped up in tree branches,’ Suki hissed. ‘It’s like the trees came alive and captured them.

Appa landed with a thud.

Sokka laughed. ‘Prince Zuko!  _ Wood  _ you like some help?’

Toph punched him in the arm. He whimpered and rubbed his shoulder. ‘I was just trying to lighten the mood,’ he said.

‘Avatar Aang!’ Zuko called, voice absolutely murderous. ‘What will you do to us?’

Suki glanced over at Aang. She had expected him to be excited – the mission was over, they had won – but instead he looked conflicted. ‘I’m not sure.’ he said, finally.

‘What do you  _ mean  _ you're not sure?’ Katara asked. ‘Let’s get them out, tie them up, and bring them back!’

‘Yeah.’ Aang muttered.

They climbed out of the saddle and slid down Appa’s side. Toph let out a deep sigh when her feet hit the ground. ‘That feels so good!’ she almost moaned, rubbing her hands and toes in the dirt. Suki felt like she should look away.

‘Zuko,’ Aang started. Then the day got even weirder.

A  _ creature  _ stepped out of the tree holding Zuko. It was tall and lanky, arms and legs twice as long as a normal person’s. It bent forward at the waist, so its hands brushed the ground. It was furry, with gray hair covering its body and a white ruff around its neck. Its eyes were wide and staring, red-rimmed with blank white centers. Suki jumped.

‘Oh.’ Aang said. He was the only one who wasn’t startled. ‘It must be a spirit, guys! A forest spirit.’

‘Avatar Aang,’ the spirit said. For something so strange looking, its voice was surprisingly soft and refined. ‘Welcome to my woods.’

‘Hello,’ Aang said, bowing low. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. What's your name?’

‘I am the kodama,’ said the spirit. ‘These are my trees.’

‘A kodama!’ Katara whispered. ‘Gran-Gran used to tell us stories about those! But I always thought they were cute little white creatures. Not…’ She trailed off.

‘We’re chasing these people,’ Aang said, pointing at Zuko and the others. ‘Could we have them?’

The kodama rubbed its forearms over each other. ‘I must ask a favor of you, Avatar,’ it said. ‘I have captured these in order to bring you here… I have waved to you to ask you to help me.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Aang said.

‘My roots are dying,’ said the kodama. ‘Poison has seeped through the earth, and it kills whatever it touches.’

‘Oh,’ Aang said. ‘That’s terrible. Where is the poison coming from?’

‘Towards the sunrise,’ the kodama said. ‘There is a great metal building. It is from there that the poison comes.’

‘Metal building to the east?’ Aang said, turning back to the rest of them. ‘What's to the east that could make poison?’

‘It’s just the mountains,’ Sokka said. ‘No one’s built anything there for years.’

‘There is a building there,’ the kodama insisted. ‘A secret building. Men go in and out and I do not see what goes on within.’

‘Well,’ Aang said, straightening his robes. ‘If there’s a secret building making poison that’s killing the kodama spirit, that means it’s time for…’

‘Avatar business,’ Sokka, Katara, and Toph finished, with varying degrees of exasperation.

‘Let’s go.’ Sokka said to Suki. ‘You'll love Avatar business. It’s when Aang goes full-out Avatar and tears stuff apart.’

‘What do we do with them?’ Suki asked, nodding toward the four ex-Fire Nation runaways, still immobile against the trees.

‘Could you take care of them while we’re gone?’ Aang asked the kodama. The spirit nodded.

‘Of course, Avatar.’

‘And if they try to get away,’ Toph added, with another of her shark-grins, ‘crush their hands.’

Zuko growled. It was less intimidating considering his face was framed with leaves and blossoms. ‘So they haven’t banished you yet, traitor?’ he spat.

‘Nope,’ Toph beamed at him. ‘I guess I'm just a lot more likable than you.’

‘Let’s go,’ Aang said. ‘We’ve got a secret metal poison building to get rid of.’

* * *

_ They had told him that the girl had made a scene, back in Wonju. She had been screaming in the middle of the street. Word had gone around quickly. It always did in such sleepy little towns; nothing ever happened, so when something did, it was a story for weeks. _

_ Probably only half of what they told him was true. Kosta didn’t think she had actually gone around tearing her hair and knocking over pottery. But it was the ex-princess; he was sure of that. _

_ He went where they pointed him. Out of the city and along the road. There wasn’t much to track, on this solid stone. But he moved carefully, watching the edges of the road for tracks away from the Road and into the fields. If the Avatar was chasing them, he’d already be ahead of Kosta; and if the runaways had seen that great flying beast, they’d leave the road as quickly as possible. _

_ The footprints started when the Road neared the forest. They broke away from the Road – they had been running, he could tell – and made straight for the nearest copse of trees. _

_ Kosta followed the prints. They had to be close. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pseudo-sponsored by Princess Mononoke, to which a reference was made. The _kodama_ are a Japanese myth that got reimagined by Studio Ghibli. I am fascinated by both versions. 
> 
> Anyway, if update gets choppy - _more_ choppy, I guess, I haven't been the most consistent anyway - it's because everything came out of nowhere at once. I know there are some folks out there who thrive under lots of work. I am not one. 
> 
> Also, if anyone wants to be buddies with me for NaNoWriMo and provide me with motivation for original work, I am on there under jaqewithak. This year I'll do it. I really will. 
> 
> Comment, kudos, and subscribe! Happy Halloween!
> 
> Survive!


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